


cast our fevers in stone

by nagia



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: "Stiles Was Bitten" AU, Abandoned - Concluded, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Multi, Pre-Slash, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Werewolf Stiles Stilinski, implied american gods crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-31
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-10 16:24:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 64,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1161925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if fate twisted the other way? </p><p>OR: Stiles's life has just become an object lesson in "why we do not go out in the woods looking for dead bodies."  </p><p>OR: Lycanthropy and ADHD are going to be the suckiest mix.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There's a house by the rails that I know  
In a valley on its own  
With trains and bones and birds in the yard  
where the wild nettles grow.  
Growing over the door  
Growing up through the walls  
Growing up, growing over  
A treasure to be told.

So wave goodbye to living alone  
I think we've found our home  
Lets paint these walls and pull up the weeds  
and cast our fevers in stone.  
Growing out of the drugs  
Growing up through the night  
Growing up, growing old  
With treasure to be told...

— Patrick Wolf, "The Railway House"

* * *

"We're going," he says to Scott. Every word leaves white plumes in the air, and Stiles pulls his red hoodie closer around him for a moment. Beacon Hills gets more rain than snow in the winter — one of the glories of being in the Pacific Northwest — but he kind of wonders if it's cold enough for some of the water on the roads to have iced over.

Scott rolls his eyes, but there's an amused curl to his lip as they pile into the Jeep. They tune out the engine as they drive, laughing and talking in a half shout, while trying to imagine what it must have been like to stumble upon a girl's legs and nothing else. Outside the Jeep, the city rolls by, gradually changing from the old, spread out, thinly-forested neighborhoods to a small downtown area to highway. The moon hangs low over wooded plains, and more and more trees appear, until at last Stiles parks at one of the far entrances to the Preserve.

"Do we even have a flashlight? How we do know where we're supposed to look?"

"I didn't think of that. We've got our phones, right? We can use those."

"Glad to know you've planned this with your usual attention to detail."

Stiles just huffs out a chuckle, scaling a small hill by crouching and pulling at underbrush. Here's hoping none of it's poison oak. So he's impulsive. He's never gotten himself or Scott into any kind of _actual_ trouble. Just weird shenanigans, and the adults in their lives have always been too bemusedly entertained to really crack down. That's not exactly a bad record, in his opinion.

"You're the one always bitching about how nothing ever happens."

Scott doesn't answer. Instead, they creep sideways along the knoll. Stiles can hear voices in the distance, catch the faint, broken glow of flashlights sweeping through trees. They do a pretty good job of skulking away from the search party —

Until a German Shepherd barks, and Scott goes down in a pile of leaves and failure. Stiles ducks behind a tree, trying to quiet his breathing. Should he intervene?

"No, no, I think I recognize this fine, upstanding young ruffian," his father's voice says, dry and amused. "My son wouldn't happen to be with you, now would he, Scott?"

"N-no, sir," Scott stammers. "He gave me a ride to the Preserve so I could get some distance running in where I wouldn't run into Jackson, but he's gone now."

"Distance running? And what do you mean gone?"

"One last run before lacrosse practice starts again tomorrow. I'm making first line this year," Scott adds, and Stiles can't help the wave of fond exasperation. It's nice that Scott has a dream, at least, even if it's stupidly optimistic and never going to happen. (He tries not to examine his feelings for Lydia in that light.)

"And Stiles isn't joining you? Pretty sure he's attached to the idea of actually playing."

"He said it was really, really, words-I-can't-repeat cold, and not even lacrosse is worth being out in it." There's a pause, and Dad must give him some sort of Son Did You Really Try That? look, because Scott adds, "He said it was ass-fuck a monkey cold, and if I wanted first line that badly, I could freeze my balls off alone."

That startles a laugh out of Dad, and Stiles almost cheers. It's one hundred percent false, because Stiles would never leave Scott to freeze his testicles off alone, but it's a surprisingly good lie from Scott "Uhhhhh It Was Like This When I Found It?" McCall. Usually Scott's a shit liar, so he must have been thinking it up during their walk. It must be nice to be able to look before leaping.

Dad must not completely buy it, because he calls into the woods, "Stiles? You out there?"

Stiles doesn't answer, and after a moment, there's a muffled thud. Dad has clapped Scott on the shoulder, probably. "Alright. Well, since Stiles apparently isn't here, you can wait by my squad car. I'll have one of the rookies drop you home."

"Thanks, Sheriff," Scott says.

And then Stiles is alone in the woods. Well, no point wasting his freedom.

* * *

Okay, alone in the scary, cold woods at midnight, and quite possibly about to stumble across half a girl's dead body. Stiles begins to think that making his way back to the Jeep would _not_ have been a waste of opportunity. In fact, it'd have been a fucking glorious idea. Why didn't he do that?

So he turns around. They'd come in on the Rowan Trail, which shouldn't be more than a few dozen yards back west.

Only Stiles goes several dozen yards before hearing the sluggish burbling of Hale Creek. Which is _not_ in the direction of Rowan Trail. He's completely turned around and managed to go northeast instead of due west. How did he do that? He's got a fucking compass on his phone!

Stiles growls his favorite self-directed insults under his breath. He almost cannot believe he did this, but not only is he shrugging his way through moon-silvered bushes, it is one hundred percent believable that he would do something this stupid. Not because he's stupid — he's not; he knows he's not — but he just doesn't fucking think things through. And being out in the cold at midnight with very little idea of how to get back to his car is definitely —

What the hell is that thumping?

Stiles turns around very slowly. And then he flings himself to the ground as what looks like an entire herd of deer (do deer have herds?) all race past him. He covers his head in his arms, hoping like hell he doesn't get caught in some really pissed deer meat grinder stampede.

Only when they're gone, he realizes they weren't pissed about anything. They had been terrified. Because the forest has gone completely silent around him now save for one sound: a low, rumbling snarl. Stiles peers around, tries to find the source. Which is when he spots the face and blank eyes of a dead girl.

As he flails back, he finds himself tripping. He rolls gracelessly down a hill he hadn't even realized was behind him, picking up at least five bruises on the way, jeez. He reaches the bottom with a thump that knocks all thought from his head and breath from his lungs for a minute. He takes some time to pull himself together, then fights his way to his feet, looking around for anything else that might send insane fauna his way.

He doesn't look long before seeing a shape in the darkness. It's vaguely dog-like, but it's bigger than any dog Stiles has ever seen. Its eyes are red (is it some sort of albino?) but they also seem to glow, which must be a trick of the moon.

"Uh, nice doggie?' Stiles draws himself up to his full height, but tries to avoid looking it in the eyes again.

He's trying to focus on a plant close to the dog's feet when the dog lunges forward. Stiles flails backwards, but it's on him far, far too quickly to dodge. Something burns in his side, on his rib-cage, spreading and sharp. He hears flesh tear as he staggers away from the animal, puts a hand to the spot and finds it wet.

He's bleeding. The stupid thing bit him and now he's bleeding. And it's not just little oozes, either; he's fucking gushing.

There's another noise off in the distance, twigs snapping, shrubs moving. The dog's head snaps up. It peels its lips back to reveal red-stained teeth, then bounds off in the direction of the new noise.

At least it didn't want him for more than a temporary chew toy. Stiles presses a hand to the bite, applying as much pressure as he can, and stumbles off. He careens through the woods on unsteady legs, bruises twinging with each breath, each step. He reaches the edge of a highway — the same one that will lead to his parking spot — and gasps in relief.

The bite's an on-again, off-again throb in his side. It's a needle-sharp sudden agony, when it throbs, but radiates heat even when it isn't spiking. He's starting to feel feverish. So feverish that he almost wants to slump down to the cold blacktop and rest forever.

He trips and nearly goes sprawling into the path of an oncoming SUV. The car swerves, blares its horn, and he windmills his arms and manages to jerk himself back. He looks around, tilting his head, and then finally trudges in the direction of the Jeep.

* * *

Neither his dad's car nor the squad car is in the drive when he gets home, so Stiles lets himself in and heads straight upstairs.

He shucks everything and takes as cold a shower he can stand, making sure to get lots of cold water on the bite. Now that he's something like clean, he can see it really wasn't so bad. The bruises from his trip down the hill are the really pale yellow that means they'll go away soon, and the bite's bleeding has slowed down to a respectable ooze, rather than horror movie gouts of red stuff. So he digs through the first aid kit in his bathroom, slathers on rubbing alcohol and Neosporin, and slaps a big white bandage on it.

He chugs water straight from the tap, pours a glass to sit next to his bed, and is in snooze land just moments after his head hits the pillow.

* * *

The following morning is absolute shit. He takes his Adderall the minute he wakes up, then zombie-walks to the shower. He rips his bandage off and tosses it in the trash the moment he's naked, before he even slides the curtain over or turns on the spray. The bite doesn't look as deep as it had last night. He pokes at it, frowning, before peering at it in the mirror. Maybe he'd just been freaking out, and perceived it as worse than it was?

He usually runs his mornings pretty tight, keeps himself on track with a nine-alarm system, but it feels almost impossible to get his head on straight. He snoozes his "get out of the shower" alarm twice before he finally obeys it, then groans when he has to carefully towel off the bite. There are purple and yellow bruises around the impress of each tooth, and the entire area is swollen, though thankfully not red. He swabs on more Neosporin and covers it with another bandage.

And then he realizes he didn't lay out his clothes last night and probably has no idea where his keys are. Okay, jeans, a black tee, a plaid overshirt, a red hoodie. Layers are good. Socks. Tennis shoes. He has to duck back into his room for his phone _twice_ , then snaps his laptop shut and sighs. Is he forgetting something? His backpack is in his jeep already.

He searches his room as well as the entire downstairs for his car keys before he finally finds them in the freezer. By the time he's ready to leave, he's running ten minutes later than he'd like (though not actually late), and only has time to grab a mango Naked out of the fridge rather than eat anything.

Neither the squad car nor Dad's actual car is in the drive, he notices as he locks the door. Has Dad not come home yet, or did Dad get home after him and leave before he woke up?

And why the hell can't he focus on the road? He doesn't even have the post-Adderall clenched-jaw jitters, just regular nervous energy ADHD jitters.

* * *

"Maybe it was a wolf," Scott says, later that morning. 

They're standing outside the school — no use looking eager — and the sun is warm on the top of Stiles's head. Stiles takes a deep breath in through his mouth, and would swear he can taste the fog the sun has burned away.

Stiles shakes his head. "Nah, can't be."

"I thought I heard a wolf howling when I was waiting by the squad car."

"You didn't. There haven't been wolves in California for like sixty years."

Scott just shrugs and says, "So let me see it."

Stiles lifts his tee and shows Scott the huge white bandage. Scott bends down, peering without trying to touch, and then shakes his head. "You think it was one of the K-9's?"

"I'm kind of betting on Roscoe," Stiles lies. "He's the biggest of the K-9's and he's never liked me."

"You're childish with him."

"Because Deputy Novak wants to be able to take Roscoe into schools! Dog's got to get used to kid behavior. Method to my madness, man."

It wasn't Roscoe. Not even the Beacon County Sheriff's Office would keep around an overly aggressive K-9 officer, so Roscoe's behavioral issues aren't "frighten deer and bite unidentified humans without direct instruction from his handler" terrible. Not to mention, given Roscoe's size and temperament, Novak pretty much never takes him off the lead during field work. Stiles is actually kind of convinced that Roscoe lives in his crate when he and Novak aren't on duty.

But Stiles says none of that. He just follows Scott into the school. They stop briefly by their lockers, and Stiles fights not to flinch at the way sound bounces off the hallway, reverberating endlessly from metal lockers and along tiled floors. Everything seems like three times louder than usual, but it must be the hypersensitivity fucking with him. Maybe he just got used to quiet over winter break.

But English is no quieter than the halls. He can hear the buzzing of cellphones, the subtle tap-tap-tap of people trying to stealth text. A phone rings, harsh and shrill as if it went off next to his ear, and he jumps in his seat, but nobody pulls it out of their bag. Is he hearing a phone in another room? He tries to filter out the rest of the sounds, but he can't seem to manage it.

And then a girl's voice says, "Mom, three calls on my first day is a little overdoing it."

Stiles can't help startling. His gaze darts around the room, but it's not coming from there. it's... to his left? He turns, and finds himself staring out the window. And now that he's looking at her, he can hear a little better.

"Everything except a pen. Oh my god, how did I forget a pen? Oh, okay, gotta go, love ya." She sounds rushed, and as she approaches the school, he can hear a faint, rhythmic thumping beneath her conversation with the vice principal.

Stiles tilts his head, trying to figure out what it is, but then Mr. Apison stops by his desk. "And what do you think of the symbolism in Kafka's _Metamorphosis_ , Mr. Stilinski?"

"Not much," he says, half-jumping in his seat again. "My impression was that Kafka didn't write for literary critics. He wasn't big into critical reinterpretations of his work, right? He mostly just read his stuff aloud to his friends for the surreal humor." 

(The girl is saying _"No, but we lived there for more than a year, which is unusual for my family."_ )

"I can safely say that he never wrote much about that in any extant correspondence," Mr. Apison says, tone dry.

( _"Well, hopefully Beacon Hills will be your last stop for a while."_ )

"But he didn't want his manuscripts published after his death, he wanted them destroyed. Sounds like an aversion to critics and the lit wolrd, to me —"

The vice principal interrupts him with a knock on the door, then he opens it and says, "Class, this is our new student, Allison Argent. Please do your best to make her feel welcome."

Stiles finds himself beginning to wonder if the thumping he hears is her…her heartbeat? That doesn't even make sense, but he can hear it thrumming in a slow thud-thud under every word.

Allison Argent takes the seat behind Scott and next to Stiles. So Stiles grabs a spare pen (is she ADHD too? How do you prepare for school and not even have pens?) and offers it to her. He lets his mouth curve, but he doesn't really bother giving her a smile. She's hot, but she's no Lydia Martin.

Scott's the one to turn around with a smile. It's bright, but brittle. He's nervous. And pretty clearly falling hard for her.

She looks at the pen in her hand, then to Stiles (who shrugs), and then she smiles back at Scott.

* * *

After class, Scott stares at her in the hallway for the sophomore lockers, and Stiles fights not to roll his eyes. Dana Flynn approaches, startling Scott, but Stiles is pretty sure she's the footsteps and heartbeat he heard coming.

"Either of you have any idea why new girl has been here five minutes and is already in Lydia's clique?"

Stiles looks over at her. He tilts his head, considering (and listening, utterly without shame, to Lydia), and then says, "She's hot. Pretty people herd together."

"If that were true, Veronica would be in her crowd," Dana says, and Scott starts to reply (probably something about Veronica being a freaky, creepy sociopath, because she _is_ ), but Stiles is listening to Allison and Lydia. Their words are even more immediate than what Scott and Dana are saying, which is just freaking insane.

 _I can't_ , Allison says. _It's, uh, Family Night this Friday_. Her heart races as she says it, and she sounds just a little tentative. Lying to avoid a party with Lydia and Jackson? Strange. He should mention it to Scott.

He tells Scott the minute Dana goes away. Scott stares at him, his brow crinkling in confusion. "How did you hear that?"

"Maybe I was practicing lip reading," he says, because _So I can suddenly hear all sorts of shit and can't tune any of it out, and by the way my Adderall doesn't seem to be working_ is not going to fly.

Scott just eyes him, a little wary.

They get through the day, but Stiles can't seem to focus on anything, and he's hungry enough to actually eat at lunch. Harris is like a medieval inquisitor, only with some sort of psychic sense for when Stiles's concentration has slipped. He manages to insinuate that Stiles is stupid and/or defective four separate times in forty minutes, and Stiles bites his cheek until he bleeds, though it stops quickly (and must go numb or something, because he can't feel where his teeth dug in). The impulse to stand up, tell Harris where he can shove his unprofessional bullying, and then go report his ass to the guidance office is so strong that he finds his hands clenching into fists. He hooks an ankle around his chair leg to keep himself planted in place.

Scott stops him as they head out of their last class, on the way to the lacrosse locker rooms. His heart is rabbity and his eyes are wide. It's panic.

"Stiles, I can't find my inhaler. I must have dropped it in the woods last night."

Shit. Stiles doesn't want to go back into those woods. There are big fucking dogs there. Not to mention he's like 90% sure his Adderall still hasn't kicked in yet and he'll probably roll the Jeep on the drive.

But inhalers are like eighty bucks, and it's Stiles's fault he was out in the woods anyway. So Stiles digs in the pockets of his jacket until he finds the spare inhaler he carries. "Here, take this and head to practice. I'll go check the woods. From where the squad cars were to where we got separated sound good?"

Scott reaches out for it. His fingers feel cold as he curls them around the inhaler in Stiles's open hand.

"Could have dropped it when we were climbing that hill," Scott admits. After a moment, he does some simple math in his head and says, "You can't skip the first practice back! You'll lose your shot at first line."

"Dude. I don't actually _have_ a shot at first line. What planet have you been living on? I promise, it'll be okay. I'll call you when I get to the Preserve."

"We could wait until after practice and go together," Scott says.

"Yeah, let's search the entire woods in, like, half-light with our cell phones. That'll end really well for us." Stiles rolls his eyes.

Scott watches him go with a puppy's guilty expression. Stiles almost feels like an asshole, but he's long accepted that he's just not actually good enough for first line. Lacrosse matters to Stiles because it's fun and because Scott likes it. The whole team idea is just sort of gratuitous, really.

* * *

He only breaks three traffic laws on his way to the Preserve, cringing at how loud his Jeep's engine is the whole drive there. He uses the back road entrance, pulling into the distant parking lot he'd used last night. He stumbles when he opens the door. It's like running full speed into a wall of scent and sound: he can smell dirt and moss and fur, and he hears small animals rustle through the dry leaves, and somewhere in the distance water burbles over stone.

He puts his head in his hands. Tries to focus on looking at his feet, on breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, but there's no shutting up a world determined to be loud, no shutting out a world determined to break in.

Even the feeble, forest-choked sunlight seems to want to stab his eyes.

He breathes calming breaths. Keeps them long and slow, pulling the air deep into his chest and counting off seconds. It's just hypersensitivity. It's just the ADHD, messing with him. He doesn't have to panic; he knows exactly what's wrong, and he knows how to fix it. 

And slowly, bit by bit, the world recedes again. He sets off into the woods, pulls out his phone and calls Scott, but gets no answer. Practice must have started already, so he leaves a voicemail.

He works his way to the hill they climbed in the dark. He spends a good five minutes on that hill, just kind of crab walking to see if he can at least feel the inhaler. But it's not there, so he heads up to where he and Scott had separated. Searching that area takes twenty minutes of fruitless fumbling and impotent cursing, while the wind blows new scents in on the breeze.

He heads onto Ash Trail. It leads back to the main lot, where the squad cars would have parked. The forest flirts with his senses; new smells waft around, new noises tease the edge of his hearing.

He catches the scent of… someone else. It's an earthy, grassy scent, overlaid in leather, with a touch of musk — and, more interesting, a scent Stiles could only describe as "wild". It's not quite fur, but there's something in it that smells like not-quite-human skin and white bone.

Stiles looks up and into the gray-green eyes of a man whose jawline could cut diamonds. 

"What are you doing here? This is private property," the other man tells him.

"Uh, we're in the Preserve. That's county property by definition, dude."

The guy's eyelids flicker, and Stiles looks at him, tilting his head. He's almost sure he recognizes — nope, no, he definitely recognizes this dude. Since when did Derek Hale look like this? Hell, since when is Derek Hale back in Beacon Hills? Stiles recalls his older sister dragging him off to, like, New York or somewhere after the fire. 

Derek folds his arms over his chest. He's got, like, tree trunk biceps. Stiles is duly impressed, but that doesn't seem to gratify Derek, if the flat, unwelcoming tone to his words is any indication. "Why are you here?"

"A friend and I I were messing around in the woods last night, stupid stuff, he dropped his inhaler. Those actually cost money, so..."

Derek takes a step closer. The wind changes, blows from behind Stiles toward Derek, and then Derek's nostrils flare. His pupils blow wide for a second, before Derek gives him a look that is two parts disbelief and one part disappointment in how thoroughly the world has failed him. Even his eyebrows look let down.

"When were you bitten?" The words are harsh, demanding, and Stiles blinks.

"Uh, last night. How did you know I was bitten?"

"I can smell the wolf in you." Derek looks away, and now his eyebrows are grumpy. Stiles isn't sure if the mighty biceps make the almost petulant cast to Derek's face cute or just moderately less terrifying.

Stiles doesn't bother trying to hide the flat incredulity he feels. "Smell the wolf in me."

He is not remotely prepared for Derek to suddenly be standing toe-to-toe with him (how did that even happen? It actually took a literal eyeblink!). Nor is he prepared for Derek to lean in even closer, _sniff_ him, and then yank his shirt up. Derek's gaze scorches along Stiles's abs for a bare second before he hooks his fingers in the white bandage, now spotted with blood, and rips it away.

Stiles shrieks and flails, tries to shove Derek away, but the older man simply grabs both his wrists in one hand and points. "Is that where you were bitten?"

Stiles looks down.

His skin is smooth and winter-pale. No sign of toothmarks, no sign of the bruising. It's as if last night never happened. He pokes himself, but the skin feels normal under the pads of his fingers. No sudden sharp pains. What the hell? Does he have some sort of Deadpool healing factor?

Okay, the werewolf thing is gaining a little credence. It would explain the red-eyed thing that bit him and the senses at least. But what (who?) was the red-eyed bitey thing?

"It…it wasn't you, was it?" He says slowly. "You didn't bite me, or you'd have known exactly where the bite was, right?"

"No," Derek says. "I didn't bite you. Even if I bit you, I couldn't turn you. Only alphas can do that."

"Pack leaders?" Stiles asks. The word _alpha_ has a weird pull to it, a weight that reminds him a little of his father.

Derek gives him a sharp nod. "Pack leaders, and the strongest and most dangerous of our kind. You and I are betas."

"So, wait, bitten by a werewolf, turning into a werewolf, is that why I can't concentrate? Why I have crazy strong senses? And, hey, how old were you when you were bitten?"

"I was born a werewolf. Your senses should be heightened, but I've never heard of the transformation affecting ability to concentrate."

"I'm ADHD, dude, and my Adderall hasn't worked all day. Is that this crazy Deadpool healing factor? Can werewolves even _take_ medicine, or do we hyper-metabolize it?"

"We don't _need_ medication," Derek says. "We don't get sick. Our injuries heal before they can develop infections. We don't need corrective lenses. The wolf heals everything wrong with you."

"Then apparently," Stiles snaps, "my wolf thinks that ADHD is just fine and dandy business as usual for the brain."

"Is it really that bad?" Derek cocks his head, considering and confused, and Stiles kind of wants to scream.

Instead, he says, "No. No, it's totally not that bad. I'm just going out of my freaking mind. But hey, no big deal, I'll get used to it."

That gets Derek's attention. "Out of your mind… how?"

Derek totally thinks he's going to crack and become an axe murderer. Possibly a pickaxe murderer. Considering that Stiles has spent the day wanting to drive ice picks into his ears, that's probably not a far off assumption.

"Okay, imagine that you wake up one day and you can hear more than ever, can smell more than ever, and you can't turn any of it off, and the thing that lets you turn it off doesn't work. That kind of out of my mind. I'm sure it's cool and all, but it's wildly incompatible with staying sane."

"It makes you hypervigilant," Derek says. And, softer, he adds, "That's an advantage on the hunt."

"Yeah, total advantage, except for how I am not a hunter, and also very likely to get distracted into forgetting I'm on a hunt. I once lost a baseball game because I was looking for clover in the outfield. And let's not even talk about how you have so totally missed my freaking point, man."

"I heard your point," Derek grumps. "But the advantage in a hunt is why the change left the ADHD alone."

Okay, that makes a certain element of sense. Stiles nods, then locks the pad of his thumb between his teeth and thinks about three different things at once. "Look. You're, uh, in the loop. I'm obviously really, really not. Are you going to… help me?"

"That should be your alpha's job," Derek says.

"Well, obviously I have a shitty alpha if he hasn't, like, found me and given me the 'so you've got a brand new fur problem' talk. Oh my god does PETA know about werewolves? Do they have Opinions?" 

Stiles is suddenly imagining PETA protesters with, like, signs saying things like 'free the wolf inside you.' 'Let the wolf run free!' Crap like that.

"PETA doesn't believe in domesticating animals, so they euthanize thousands of pets per year. What do _you_ think they know?"

"Not shit?"

Derek's jawline softens for a moment.

"See? I don't even know if PETA knows anything. Shitty, terrible, no-good alpha. Please say you'll help me. I can't live with all these senses dialed up to eleven all the time."

"Fine," Derek says. "But we're not starting today. Think you can last twenty-four hours?"

Yes! Success! Victory at sea! His life might actually not suck forever, now! That is a lot of mental exclamation points. But still: success. Derek Hale (secret werewolf, what the hell — or should that be what the Hale, nah, guy's probably heard that joke ten thousand times) will tutor him in the ways of the wolf.

"Yeah, I can last a day," he says. "Guess I'd better start looking for that inhaler."

With that, he turns around, trying to remember where he'd been looking, where he'd been going. Something small and hard whistles through the air, and though he turns in time, he still gets smacked in the chest by a plastic thing. The plastic thing bounces off his chest and skitters onto the ground.

Stiles looks down at Scott's inhaler, but when he looks back up, Derek is gone.

* * *

He stops by the clinic to drop Scott's inhaler off. He thinks about telling Scott about the whole werewolf thing. He can't imagine himself keeping it from Scott, can't imagine keeping anything important from Scott. But would Scott believe him? Apart from his new-found senses, he doesn't have much in the way of proof. He could cut himself, maybe, but that seems drastic. Maybe if he turns into a wolf or whatever, Scott will believe him.

Okay, so he'll tell Scott, just not right now.

Scott passes him back the spare inhaler.

Stiles drops by the library, grabbing pretty much every book on mythical creatures and a few books on actual wolves before he drives back to his neighborhood. He'll tell his father, too, as soon as he can prove it and not get sent to a little white room. He has to.

* * *

His father isn't home yet when Stiles parks the Jeep in the drive. He sighs, pulls on the parking brake, and heads into the house. Keys go into the bowl by the door. He heads into his room, puts his phone on the charger, and debates. Homework or wolf research?

Ugh, homework comes first. So he sits at his laptop and does his reading. He has a few occupational therapy tricks he learned from Dr. Williams. He plays some music at a low volume — just enough to help him think — then reads for fifteen minutes, does a few jumping jacks, then goes back to reading. He does a lot of switching, trying to keep his mind occupied with entirely school-related thoughts.

It takes three hours to get through work that should have taken him an hour and a half. But once he's done, it's time for the fun stuff: werewolf research. He switches his playlist from the near-classical to his favorite punk bands and settles in to read about wolves, of the were and natural variety.

Somewhere in there, he loses the thrumming hum and nasal shout-singing of the punk music, mind absorbed in words and notes.

He doesn't even look up until Dad barges into his room. "Stiles! What are you doing still awake?"

Stiles looks up from his laptop. "Uh, research?"

"On _what_?"

"On wolves! Did you know that the pop culture perception of the highly structured wolf pack — you know, alpha pair, betas, gammas, omegas, constantly fighting for dominance, all that crap — is actually the result of putting a bunch of wolves who didn't know each other into a cage? It's sort of like mistaking prison culture, or high school culture, which is apparently really similar, for standard human social behavior."

Dad exhales an exasperated sigh. "Why are you researching... no, never mind. There's never much of a 'why' with you. You have to leave for school in three and a half hours."

"I'm not keeping you up, am I?" He feels vaguely panicky and completely guilty at the thought.

"No," Dad says, shaking his head. "I just got home. It's four in the morning, Stiles."

He smells of forest: of dirt and leaves and cold air, of mud, of greasy donuts. Stiles narrows his eyes.

"Have you been eating donuts? Those don't metabolize well while you sleep."

"Stiles. Four in the morning."

"Too late to sleep now," Stiles says with a shrug. "I'll turn the music off and just finish up the research. But have you been eating donuts?"

"Hours ago," his father sighs. "I can never get the junk food past you, can I?"

"And I'm only going to get better at sniffing it out," he says, and Dad gives him a rueful grin. Somebody doesn't realize how honest he's being.

Dad just heaves a sigh and heads out to his room. Stiles keeps on reading. Eventually, his alarm goes off, and he rolls out of bed, lets the timed beeps herd him through his morning. It's a little easier than yesterday, but not by much.

* * *

He manages to make it to school without rolling the Jeep. (Rolling the Jeep is actually kind of a big concern for him.) And when he carefully slides his way into homeroom and takes his seat by Scott, Scott turns to him with a triumphant grin.

"Dude! You're never going to believe this!"

"I can believe in a lot of things. Try me. What am I never going to believe?"

"I'm going to Lydia's party with Allison!"

Stiles exaggerates a double-take, lets his shoulders jerk and his eyebrows fly up. The jaw drop is genuine, though. "Okay, nope. Not sure I believe that one. Are you _serious_? You're going to one of _Lydia Martin_ 's parties with the hot new girl?"

"Allison, yeah. She came to the clinic last night and..."

Scott tells him a long story involving animal cruelty and tiny snapping teeth and saying he would cry. Stiles never really thought that would impress girls, but Scott probably has the charm to pull it off. Or maybe Allison's just weird. Maybe both are true.

" grats on the ding, buddy," Stiles says. "So is it going to be, like, a date?"

"Maybe? I hope? If everything goes okay?"

"Good luck," Stiles tells him, and wonders just what he's going to be doing on Friday night. He's pretty sure it'll be werewolf school.

* * *

School is like a new circle of hell. Though Stiles isn't sure if it's as bad as it was yesterday. Once again, he has trouble focusing in class, and once again, Harris makes Chemistry miserable. He even eats at lunch again. At least there's no lacrosse practice today, so he heads straight from class up to the Preserve.

He realizes, once he's in the Preserve, that he has no real way to find Derek.

Whatever. They'll exchange phone numbers or something today. Maybe Derek'll show him his campsite, or wherever he's been staying while he's been here. Maybe he'll even tell Stiles why he came back.

He hasn't taken more than a few steps onto the path — smelling of dirt and moss and stone and dry wood — when he hears a heartbeat, slow and steady, and smells once again the grass-leather-bone scent of Derek Hale. He turns in the direction of the heartbeat.

Derek nods once. His eyebrows look approving, if grudgingly. "Are you ready?"

"Sure. Where do we start?"

"Checking your physical condition," Derek says. "Your endurance and muscle strength will have improved. Pain tolerance usually increases. How's your temper been?"

"Uh, the same? I haven't been, like, angrier than usual or anything. Why?"

Derek frowns. His eyebrows frown with him. "Have you felt on edge at all?"

"I can't freaking concentrate anymore. If this focus crap keeps up, I'll have to stop driving. So you could say I live on the edge."

"Bitten wolves… usually have anger issues for the first month," Derek finally offers. "Goes in hand with the strength increase."

"Nope, none of that." Stiles pauses. "Wait, a strength increase? You mean I'm going to get, like, super-strength?"

"Should already have it. Sometimes it develops a while after the senses. We need to see."

* * *

How does Derek Hale jog ten miles in a leather jacket? Stiles can keep up speed-wise for short bursts, but from the looks Derek is giving him, he hasn't received the full super-abilities package yet. By mile five, Stiles is too exhausted to care. At mile ten, he flops down to the ground — something furry has been there recently, could be rabbit or squirrel — and groans.

"I'm going to have the worst leg cramps tomorrow."

"You won't," Derek says easily. He crouches near Stiles, cocks his head. The light makes his eyes look more gray than green. They're still stunning. "But we won't do this again until your strength develops."

"Blessings on you, blessings on your family, blessings on your cow," Stiles says, limply pointing at nothing to indicate the family and cow Derek doesn't have.

Derek's expression freezes for a second, his entire body stiffening.

"Sorry," Stiles says.

Derek wrinkles his nose. "No, it's… it is what it is." He sounds completely dejected. Then, after a moment, he adds, "Since you can't control your _mouth_ , probably good you don't have enhanced strength."

"Yeah, when my strength starts adjusting, I'd better go on some kind of mountain retreat." Stiles pauses, then says, very softly, "Hey, with this new strength and temper stuff… am I going to be a risk to my dad?"

Derek looks at him, considering. "Probably."

"How about people at school?"

"Yes."

"I could... I could really hurt someone, couldn't I? Without meaning to?"

"Yes."

Stiles sighs. It's an explosive, chest-heaving sigh, and as he moves, he feels the faint burn of his muscles knitting into something warm. His body is already trying to adjust? That's completely freaky.

"I don't want to hurt people."

"I know." A pause, and then Derek stands. "Up. Another run, and you might be calm enough to learn to manage your senses."

"Yeah, that actually sounds kind of good right now. Turning into a werewolf has clearly made me crazy."

"You were probably already crazy," Derek snaps, but he seems pleased when Stiles keeps up a little better. They go twelve miles this time, and this time, Stiles collapses only to his knees rather than to the ground.

Derek pushes at his shoulders, shoving him down on the ground, then crouches near him.

What follows is simultaneously boring and entertaining. Derek quizzes him about what he hears, helping him to identify some of the noises, but then tells him to stretch, or to narrow his focus. It's rough going, and there are moments he's reminded of around the time he'd been diagnosed. His father and the babysitter had always been telling him: focus, Stiles, think before you act, think before you speak, try and concentrate. But those were all things that Stiles couldn't do. Didn't even know what they looked like.

His mother had understood. And after a while, Derek begins to understand that the words "focus" and "concentrate" mean nothing to Stiles, or are at least completely useless instructions.

But he doesn't figure that out before smacking Stiles upside the head and saying, "Are you even trying? Block out the wind. Just listen to the squirrel."

"Are you fucking kidding me? What part of ADHD are you not getting?"

Derek stares at him.

"I am neurochemically incapable of focusing on my own, asshole! You fucking telling me I'm not trying isn't going to help!"

Derek frowns and goes silent for long enough that Stiles starts to fidget, searching the forest floor for twigs and snapping them. But when he starts talking again, he starts asking questions like: "Alright. What have you been hearing?"

When Stiles answers, Derek asks, "And when did you first hear it?"

"When I was hearing the wind over that way," Stiles says, and points.

"How close is it?" That one makes Stiles listen harder for the elusive sound.

Stiles scrunches up his face.

"How loud is it?"

He waves a hand, then cocks his head. "Louder than that bird, but I don't think it's close."

"Why?"

And so he has to pay attention to the sound, has to describe it, and that makes focusing easier, and he realizes that he hasn't heard the rest of the forest. At his surprised look, Derek's mouth twitches.

So Stiles starts listening to the rustle of dry tree branches. If he tries, he can tell which way the wind is blowing. And maybe, if he knew this forest well enough, he could tell which trees were which. He gets lost in the sound, hearing only that one thing, not even smelling anything.

He doesn't come back to himself until Derek smacks him upside the head again. He halfway jumps, heart racing.

Derek's eyebrows frown at him. His mouth frowns, too, but the eyebrows are actually the less pleased party. "What the hell was that?"

"That was a hyperfocus," Stiles says. "I haven't had one like that in months."

"Side effect of the bite," Derek grunts. "Alright. Enough. Go home."

"Sure thing," Stiles says, easily. "Just one question: why did you come back to Beacon Hills?"

Derek glares.

"Okay. So. Talk to me about full moons? Other basic stuff? I'm flying with just, like, pop culture and Pantheon-dot-org mythology here, which is worse than flying blind."

Derek sighs. "Give me your phone."

He hands it over. Derek adds his number, and then says, "Text me your questions once you're home."

Stiles just barely manages to keep the evil grin off his face. Derek is going to regret that instruction. He's going to regret it for the rest of his life.

* * *

The cruiser is in the drive when Stiles gets home. Stiles lets himself in to see that his father has ensconced himself in the dining room with a few case files.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey." His father looks up with the usual mix of pride, wariness, and humor glinting subtly in his eyes.

"Will you be home long enough to eat? Have you eaten yet?"

"Yes and no," Dad says, and goes back to reading the case file. Stiles drifts just close enough to see that it isn't anything of particular interest to him, has nothing to do with the body in the woods or any other murder.

So Stiles leaves well enough alone, for now. He heads to the kitchen and searches through the _Thug Kitchen_ cookbook for something to make and fails to find anything he has the ingredients for and interest in. He hits up What The Fuck Am I Making For Dinner on his phone, just for ideas, but strikes out there, too.

In the end, he just throws together a whole wheat lasagna with low-fat ricotta, spinach, and ground turkey. It's easyish, it contains a form of meat his father recognizes, and it's heart-healthy. Now, if he could just find a way to make carob appetizing...

It's actually nice to see Dad home for dinner. Stiles puts the food on the dining table, since Dad is already there, and they actually eat the meal together, and neither of them turns his head to look at the couch in the dining room and the afghan on the corner.

"So how was lacrosse practice?"

"I didn't go," he confesses. "I'm… thinking about quitting the team." 

"Dr. Williams says you need an outlet," Dad says, pointing at him with a fork.

"I know. I'm just not sure it's lacrosse. I mean, it's not like I ever even play."

Dad looks long and hard at him. "Is there something going on we need to talk about?"

There is no hiding the guilty squirm. Dad's eyes sharpen on him, glinting like mica in his face, and Stiles sighs. "Okay, okay. There is something we need to talk about. But it can wait a few days, okay? It's not, like, super urgent." And he doesn't have any proof. "I guess I'm still kind of processing."

Dad nods. "I'll give you a week. If you haven't come clean in a week, I'll track you down and we'll have an awkward feelings talk."

"Sounds fair," Stiles agrees.

He has a week to find a way to prove to his father he's a werewolf. Well, if all else fails, he can grab a kitchen knife.

* * *

He's exhausted enough from all the running that he can almost focus on school work. He does end up trading texts with Derek. Some of the questions are deliberately awkward, just to needle at him. He's never had a brother, but he thinks it could be like that between them, if they let it. 

He trades texts with Scott, too, just fucking around. They play some co-op on ME3; Stiles plays his human vanguard and Scott runs around as a human sentinel. Stiles Charge-Novas and Scott abuses the Tech Armor detonation, and they get yelled at a lot by an infiltrator.

Eventually, as the hours tick near to midnight, Stiles signs out of XBox Live and puts his phone on the charger. He could swear he smells leaves as he falls asleep.

He wakes barefoot on gravel, with a twig digging into his foot and his hand gripping a tree. His legs and lungs burn. Someone with glowing blue eyes stares down at him; Stiles takes a deep breath and relaxes when he smells grass-leather-musk-bone.

"I told you to go home," Derek snarls.

"I was home." Stiles sweeps a hand down to indicate his pajamas and bare feet. "Went to bed around midnight. Now I'm here. Is sleep-walking a thing for new wolves? Did you follow all the pretty smells or whatever when you were a toddler?"

"No." Derek frowns at him, then looks down at his feet. "Do you even live near here? You've been bleeding."

"I'm a fifteen minute drive from the preserve. Maybe nine, ten miles?" Jesus, what is _with_ him running for miles at a time today?

Stiles doesn't need much light anymore, it seems. Because he can watch as Derek's eyebrows register their murderous displeasure with… Stiles? This state of affairs? The world in general? Either way, Derek and his eyebrows are murderously displeased. Stiles can't help the sharp spike of worry.

Derek kind of looks like a serial killer and doesn't seem to like Stiles much. And for all that he's the best resource Stiles has, and Stiles wants to trust him, he can't be sure Derek isn't about to take out some of that frustration on him. He might not even think of it as wrong; after all, Stiles will heal.

But Derek must be angry at the situation, not at Stiles, because he says, "Your alpha is calling you. He… probably wants you to hunt with him." 

"What, he expects me to run down a deer?"

"Right now? He probably expects you to stake out a vole. I wouldn't trust you to kill a rabbit."

Stiles squints at Derek. "Is this some sort of werewolf bonding ritual? Ugh, of course he can't he take me out for bowling or the trivia game at Tres Hermanos. Just my luck to get stuck with a shitty, sad-sack alpha."

"He's gone rogue. No sane wolf gives a human the bite without preparing them. Biting a random teenager in the woods?" Derek's frown actually gets frownier. The frowning intensifies. It's like frownception over there. "He's about to start something ugly."

Stiles is tempted to open his mouth and ask if maybe they can leave him to it, if maybe Derek can just teach Stiles how to be a properly domesticated werewolf and then Stiles can persuade his dad to move away from Beacon Hills. He wants adventure, but his stomach churns and his chest tightens at the thought of getting tangled up in this.

And what if Dad won't go? What if the ugly thing the alpha starts up somehow sucks him in? And the idea of leaving Beacon Hills, the idea of just letting some crazy gorilla wolf monster run around his town, his mother's town, his father's town makes him feel even worse. Anger burns so bright and clear and hot that it leaves him lightheaded and a little nauseated.

So he says, instead, "We have to stop him." He feels his hands clench into fists at his sides. "We can't just let him run around here. I mean... _I_ can't. Beacon Hills..."

He can't finish that sentence. What he means is too nebulous, too primal, to put into words that aren't _Beacon Hills is mine_ , and sure, it makes him feel a little like Batman, but the feeling is too real, too immediate, too much of a lump in his throat and a knot in his belly to cheapen by turning it into trite, comic book character words.

Derek gives him a look that's kind of like pride, or maybe approval. "No," he agrees. "We can't."


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles wakes up in his own room two full hours before he'd need to. He stares for a moment at the dim, hazy light that filters in from the street. His feet left smears of blood all over his sheets, and he apparently tracked leaves and twigs into his bed. Honestly, considering that he ran about twenty miles when he should have been sleeping, he got off pretty light. He hops into the shower, uses the fluorescent light and white tile to his advantage as he checks all down his legs, down to his heels and toes and soles, but sees no cuts.

He's not even sore. This Deadpool healing factor is actually kind of awesome.

Once he's dressed, he strips his bed and tosses everything into the laundry basket in his closet. He's running out of variations of red plaid, anyway; might as well do the whole load tonight. He leaves a note to that effect and a request that Dad leave some laundry by the washroom on the kitchen counter, then grabs a mango smoothie. He twists the cap and tries not to let the crik-krunch sound it makes remind him of wringing the necks of small animals.

But he's pretty sure that's what it'd sound like.

He's still in the kitchen when his father appears, apparently off duty, in a black henley and jeans. "Stiles. You going to school?"

"Nah, thought I'd rob a bank, then drive down to Vegas and con a casino or two." Stiles looks in the fridge, debating between microwaving the turkey bacon and stopping for a breakfast burrito on the way to school. Maybe he wants both. He really wants to sink his teeth into something right now.

"Stick to banks; you're not the card-counting _type_ ," Dad points out. They share a grin at that, and then Dad says, "Stiles, I need you and Scott to stay out of the woods."

"I'm not really a woods kind of guy. There's, like, meth labs in there, right?"

"I get the feeling they've been chased out by wolves. This is the first time there's been wolves in this part of California in sixty years. They've already attacked a hiker. So just ease my mind and —"

"Seriously? Did they eat him?" At Dad's flat look, Stiles sighs and says, "Okay, okay. I'll stay out of the Preserve. No promises about Scott; he gets these boneheaded ideas, you know."

"Pretty sure those are _your_ boneheaded ideas, son."

"Lies and slander!" Stiles says, and decides on a breakfast burrito. "Hey, I'm in a generous mood, so I'm leaving you the turkey bacon."

He does his best to ignore his father's grumbling as he leaves, instead listening to the soft noises of a neighbor's cat struggling with the catdoor and the whuffles of a dog out for walkies.

* * *

Stiles stops in by Coach Finstock's office before class. To his surprise, the coach is in, though he's doing something to a cup of coffee that could be either alchemy or the systematic murder of his own tastebuds and quite possibly his kidneys.

"Hey, Coach," Stiles says. He flounders for more words; _I'm quitting the team because I don't trust my werewolf temper_ is not going to go over well.

"Bilinski," Coach says. He takes a sip of his coffee and does a full-face wince-grimace that looks painful. Maybe the coffee actually hurt him. "What are you doing in my office at this hour? Go away. Too early to deal with teenage drama. I don't care what you and Whittemore get up to on your own time."

"What? I don't hang out with Jackson. I'm here to, uh. I need to quit the team. Just not working out."

Coach narrows his eyes. "Is this because you're not on first line?"

"Sort of?" Stiles scratches the back of his neck. "I'm doing a team sport because I need the outlet. For all the physical energy. But I'm just not getting enough exercise, so I thought maybe I should start something else."

"Bilinski, the bench team is actually very important. We need someone in reserve in case somebody on first line gets hurt. And you're very important to morale, especially Whittemore's; it's a visual reminder that there's people he's better than."

"Yeah, yeah, I get that, whatever. Glad it's working out so good for you, but it's not working for me. I'm serious."

"I can maybe bump you to —" 

" _No_ ," Stiles snarls. "I said I was quitting, and I meant it. And by the way, my name is _Stiles Stilinski_."

His heart starts to race, and in response to his anger, he hears Finstock's pulse pick up. He thunks his duffel of lacrosse gear onto Finstock's desk and makes his escape.

* * *

Stiles prides himself on being pretty easy-going, since the panic attacks have stopped. He makes it a point to let other people's stupidity just roll off his back. There's no use working himself up about it; it's not like any of it's going to change. He might as well shrug it all off, then wipe their noses in his awesome GPA. Assuming Lydia Martin is on her way to being their year's valedictorian, Stiles is pretty sure he's got salutatorian on lockdown, and it's hard to stay mad at the idiots when he knows he can prove that he's better than them at the rat race.

Despite that, first period English is a test of his patience.

It's not really any one thing. Mr. Apison doesn't treat him any differently than usual. They're on more Kafka, but "In The Penal Colony" was actually a pretty interesting story. He, Danny, and Lydia dominate the class discussion, and the way Lydia tries to pretend that her laser insight is from Sparknotes or whatever is annoying. But that doesn't explain the way his heart races or the way he feels like steam is building up in his veins, pumped through by his heart until he almost wants to tip his head back, open his mouth, and let some sort of teakettle shriek out.

He grabs onto the desk, tries to focus on the cool wood underneath his hand, but he honestly can't concentrate on any one thing anymore. He hears a dozen heartbeats, a dozen sets of lungs, smells twelve different kinds of shampoo and deodorant. It's cloying, and infuriating, and Stiles finds himself actually hating every person in the room. Even Scott, who has turned to look at him, eyes wide like a puppy's and brows furrowed in concern.

Stiles catches his eye and shakes his head. He offers Scott a smile, then takes a deep breath and tries to turn his attention back to class.

Every period after that is an agony that curls and scrapes at him, peeling and peeling until he feels like all the skin's been stripped right off his bones and he's just a big giant throbbing nerve.

Even lunch is infuriating. He packed his own and even remembered it on the way out the door, but Scott sits with Allison, who sits with Lydia, who sits with Jackson. Stiles knows better than to even think about sitting with them — he's so on edge that he doesn't trust himself not to rip out Jackson's throat with a spork — so he ignores Scott's frantic wave and heads out onto the chilly quad to eat. He finds himself angrily chewing on his hummus-and-chicken wrap and glaring at the lunch room.

Chemistry is the last class of the day, and by then, Stiles is so ground down from trying to focus and dealing with other people's stupid noises, that he knows better than to try and handle Harris. Harris on a good day can reduce him to grinding his teeth. Today? Stiles doesn't want to think about it.

So he heads to the nurse's office, says he doesn't feel well.

"Headache," he tells her. "Worse around noise."

Ms. Hughes gives him an unimpressed look, then shoves a thermometer into his ear. But then it beeps, and she says, "I'm surprised you've managed to last this long, kid. Have you had any Tylenol? Any nausea or other symptoms?"

"Nausea," he lies, "but that could be from the headache."

"Alright. You've got a fever, so just go home," she says. "I'll write the excuse. Rest and fluids. Go to the doctor if it's not better in the morning. You need someone to drive you?"

"I can manage," he says, and very maturely manages not to pump his fist as he makes his way to the Jeep.

* * *

At home, he grabs a glass of water, a thermometer, and tucks himself into bed — where everything smells like him, and the blankets seem to form a protective cocoon. turning the outside world into a soft, muted thing — and texts Derek.

_what's normal temp for werewolves?_

The answer comes quickly: _You're not sick._

 _just tell me what normal temp is. got sent home from school for fever._ After a moment, he adds _everything's getting on my nerves._

Rather than bother texting, Derek calls him. The first words out of his mouth when Stiles picks up are a harsh, "Did you hurt anyone?"

Stiles bites back the urge to snap that Derek isn't answering his question, but he has to take a deep breath or five. He counts to fifteen, just to give him and his sudden anger a little space. 

"No." Stiles thinks back a minute, reflects with a kind of bitter victory. "I scared the crap out of Coach when I quit the lacrosse team and spent the whole day feeling like I was going to tear some skin off and it didn't matter whose, but I didn't actually hurt anyone."

"Skip tomorrow." Derek stops, and Stiles swears he hears the gears grinding in his werewolf Yoda's head. "Skip the rest of the week. How much time will you have alone?"

Well, that's not creepy. Stiles debates a moment before answering, and then decides he'll hate himself if he doesn't ask. "Uh, dude? Try that again without sounding like either a serial murderer or a pedophile?"

"Either the moon is affecting your temper, or your strength is developing." And with that comes temper issues. And by those powers combined, he'll be Captain Danger To His Dad.

Go find a dead body, he'd said. It'll be fun, or at least interesting, he'd said.

"Okay, so why do you need to know when I'll be alone?"

"To work with you on the temper," Derek snaps.

Right. That makes sense. So Stiles tells him: "Dad's working day shifts, for now, but he's always on call for nights. I'll be alone during the late morning and early afternoon."

There's a pause. Stiles hears air rush past the receiver and wonders if maybe Derek forgot he couldn't see him and nodded. It's a surprisingly human — or at least real and fallible and totally unrelated to being his werewolf Yoda — gesture. Stiles fights back a fond grin.

"I'll be there around noon."

"Uh, be _where_ , Derek? I've never told you where I live."

"You really think it will be hard to find you?"

"You have really, _really_ got to learn to talk like you're not planning on, I don't know, hunting me down and eating me. I swear to god, even Hannibal Lecter was less creepy than you. Well, the Anthony Hopkins —" 

"Stiles," Derek says, and there's a thread of tension in his voice that sounds almost desperate. "Shut up."

* * *

Stiles gets out of bed for long enough to at least make a show of being sick for when Dad gets home. He keeps dinner plans simple, throws together a chicken noodle soup in the crock pot, and then goes back to his room. He curls himself up in his blankets and tries not to hate the whole world, just for existing.

He doesn't exactly succeed, but he's feeling a lot less homicidal when he hears a faintly familiar car turn onto the street. The car turns into the drive, and Stiles realizes that he's recognizing — learning — his father's squadcar's engine sound. For a moment he's almost giddy at how surreal his life has become.

And then his father opens the front door. Stiles hears the fabric of his uniform, the soft creak of his shoes, each step, his heartbeat, the rush of blood in his veins.

"Stiles?" His father calls.

Stiles says nothing in reply, only turns over in his bed. After several moments, he hears Dad's steps on the stair. Dad's heartbeat grows louder as it approaches.

"Hey, kid," Dad says. "Got a couple of calls from the school. Has your fever gone down?"

Stiles lies, "Don't think so. I'm still cold."

His father reaches out, presses a hand against his forehead. There's a quick uptick in his heart rate, and a sharp spike of anxiety stabs through his scent. 

"You're burning up. Go take a hot bath, kid. Can you eat?"

"I started some soup."

"Good. I'll get you a bowl of that. If your fever doesn't break by tomorrow, it's a trip to the hospital." A pause, and then Dad's voice turns stern: "I'll take you. I mean it; you shouldn't have driven yourself home with a fever this high."

Stiles obediently fights his way free of the blanket burrito he'd trapped himself in, but all he can think as he goes is _oh shit_.

* * *

Later, once he's had a ridiculously long bath and a bowl of soup, he frantically texts Derek: _How do I make my temperature go down?? Dad wants to take me to the hospital_.

Derek doesn't reply.

Stiles has to drop his phone before he tries to shove his thumbs through the screen. As he stares at his fingers, he notices the nails begin to lengthen. His face feels weird and itchy, and the nails are seriously growing into something that makes his heart race. Which just makes his face feel itchier.

It can't last forever, Stiles tells himself. He closes his eyes, breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth. That's how you're supposed to breathe during meditation, right? Whatever. In through the nose, out through the mouth, and think about his dad's hand on his forehead, how he can't let Dad see him like this. Not yet.

As his heart slows, his face stops itching and his nails return to normal.

Stiles picks up the phone, wakes the screen, and begins texting all over again.

_derek seriously if i can't get my body temp back to normal he's going to take me to the hospital and i don't know how to do that without him seeing me try it_

_what the fuck happens if i go to a hospital_

_will my blood tests be weird? will i get carted off to area 51?_

_also my nails just turned into claws and my face started itching?_

_it's gone now but it was weird_

Stiles's phone rings. He answers it immediately, and Derek's voice snarls, "Stay where you are and stop texting me. I'll be there soon."

So he blanket burritos again, and waits for Derek.

* * *

Derek doesn't ring the doorbell. No, instead, he knocks, stupid, crazy wolf that he is. He knocks and apparently waits for Dad to answer, to open up, because eventually Dad comes into Stiles's room and closes the door.

"Derek Hale wants to see you," Dad says. "Since when have you two been talking?"

"Since he got back into town. We met in the Preserve," he says. And then Stiles carefully unrolls himself. Dad helpfully stops him from pitching off the bed before he can get his legs over the edge and his feet on the floor.

Stiles heaves himself up. "Come on. I think this is a living room talk. Your gun's in the safe, right?"

"Yes," Dad replies, drawing the word out long and slow, as if Stiles is sounding crazy to him. Stiles probably is sounding crazy.

"Oh, good," Stiles replies. "Because I have something to show you, and I'd rather neither of us gets shot."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe the correct phrasing here is "Oh snap," but you kids and your newfangled slang. Sorry for the long absence; I moved from Tennessee to North Carolina, a move which was surprisingly good for my sanity, and took my job with me, at least until the beginning of March.
> 
> Updates will be sporadic as I pingpong between job hunting and working up the energy to write.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: self-harm. It's done deliberately, to make a point about the werewolf healing factor, rather than from emotional distress, but if you don't want to see it, use your search function to skip to "The conversation devolves after that."
> 
> I sincerely apologize for not adding this warning earlier.

Dad just stares at him for a long, long moment. He sighs, turns around, and heads out Stiles's door and down the stairs. Stiles pulls his pocket knife from the depths of his bedside drawer, then follows his father.

They find Derek in the living room, skin pale and eyes shadowed, wrapped up in the black leather jacket he'd worn the day Stiles met him. He looks completely out of place amidst the homey decor, all buttery yellows and soft blues, that Mom picked out years and years ago (and Dad has never had the heart to change). It's as surreal as seeing an actual wild animal in the house.

"Derek, you want to show him the thing?"

Derek gives Stiles a flat look, arching his eyebrow into serious judgment stance, before he turns to Dad and says, "You'll want to sit down for this."

Dad looks at them both like they're a little crazy and a lot ridiculous, but then he raises his hands and sits down.

Derek's entire face changes, his nails lengthening into claws and his eyes flaring a wicked blue.

Dad's heartbeat goes crazy. Stiles watches as his father makes a useless grab for his empty holster, smells the sharp sour spike of... well, honestly, probably fear, and hears his heart rate ratchets up when he realizes he's weaponless.

"Derek's not going to hurt you," Stiles says. He tries to keep his voice gentle; Dad just watched a twenty-two year old turn into some kind of monster with glowing eyes. Fear's a pretty rational reaction. "Actually," he says, and he can't quite keep his voice from breaking, "actually, Derek's here to keep me from hurting you."

"And..." His father draws the words out long and slow, "why would you worry about hurting me?"

"Because I'll have what he's having," Stiles says. There's just no resisting a _When Harry Met Sally_ joke. His Dad gives him one of those looks he generally reserves for dumbshit shenanigans, and Stiles adds, "No, seriously. I have what he has."

"Stiles, this isn't funny." Dad's staring at him now, heartbeat fast like a hummingbird's wings, for all that his face is still wearing an exaggeratedly patient expression.

So Stiles pulls the pocket knife out and presses the edge to his arm. He pushes hard, down and across, and the blade cuts in deep. Stiles watches his skin part, watches blood drip — 

And watches the skin knit itself back together, shiny and new, a fresh-healed pink that quickly fades to normal white.

Dad's up off the couch in an instant, reaching for the knife from the outside of Stiles's arm. But Stiles is stronger than his father, is able to pull the knife and the large hand holding his wrist down again, watches blood well and then clot, watches skin practically unzip, it slides open so easily, and then sew itself back together.

"It's okay," he says, "it doesn't last. It heals. And I'm stronger, faster. Angrier. I don't know how to change like that, but I will, and I — I could hurt people. Statistically, it'll be you or Scott or Mrs. McCall. You deserve to know."

"What the hell is this?" Dad asks, and presses two fingers to a pink mark that fades. "Hale, what the hell do you have?"

"I'm a werewolf," Derek says, sounding poleaxed, like he thought it was obvious.

* * *

The conversation devolves after that. Dad makes Derek shift back and forth several times, then makes him pop his claws, then wants to look at Derek's fangs.

"And this is all completely voluntary?"

"Can't call this voluntary," Derek says, lisping around his fangs, "but I control it. Stiles will too. Eventually."

Dad just frowns. "You're _sure_ Stiles will be like this? That he's — a werewolf?"

"I'm sure," Derek says, because god forbid he ever explain himself or make any effort to make sense.

That gets Dad's attention. His heart starts to pound, fury fast, sweat beading somewhere on his skin, and his scent goes frosty and bitter with something predatory, something angry. Dad asks, sharply, "Did you bite him? Is that how you're sure?"

The startled, offended look Derek gives Dad almost says more than the way Derek says, "No! I'm not even an alpha; I can't turn anybody."

Stiles is not Derek's first choice for a packmate. If Derek were an alpha, if Derek could bite and turn people, he would not have picked Stiles. That stings a bit, but to be honest, Stiles probably wouldn't have picked himself, either. He's got his good qualities, but he's probably not great werewolf material. He can't even figure out how to change properly.

Dad nods before he looks between Stiles and Derek again. He's quiet a moment before he asks, "But he doesn't… doesn't have to change? Since it's voluntary, he can stay himself?" Dad spares a wry smile, like he knows perfectly well that he's two steps from having asked _can he try not being a monster_.

"I'm still gonna be me, Dad, even if I grow ferocious Burnside mutton chops. Derek's still Derek. Just a little hairier and a little angrier sometimes." Stiles sighs. "But real talk? I'm probably going to change unintentionally. And the full moon apparently brings out the worst in us. I already scared the piss out of Finstock when I quit the lacrosse team."

Dad gives him a firm, reassuring nod. He turns to Derek. "What do I need to do?"

"The full moons before you find your anchor are always the hardest," Derek says. "He says his mood is fluctuating badly. Keep him home from school for a few days, at least until the full moon has passed."

* * *

And that's how Stiles stays out of school until the full moon. Dad doesn't let him sit around and play _Mass Effect 2_ , or finish up his City Elf rogue replay of Dragon Age, or eagerly count down the dates to the Young Justice premiere. Instead, Dad expects him to catch up on all his homework while he works with Derek on his control.

Scott drops by on Thursday, the first day of his temporary monk retreat. Derek's head jerks up, and it takes Stiles a moment to realize that he recognizes the car approaching the house. He's about to tell Derek that it's just Scott, when the werewolf's — the other werewolf's — body goes tense.

"Chill," he says, quietly, but Derek has twisted to stare at the door, and Stiles sighs.

A key scrapes in a lock. Scott smells of sweat, of exhaust, and Stiles can hear the wet, squelchy pounding of his heart.

"Hey," Scott says. "I've got your homework for everything except chemistry. I think your dad's going to have to talk to Harris." He looks at Derek, and his eyes widen a fraction.

Thanks, Scott," Stiles says. "Uh, by the way, this is Derek Hale. Derek, that's Scott, my best friend." He tries to tell Derek 'please chill the hell out' using only his face, but it must not go through, given that Derek's expression stays rock steady at the exact midpoint between 'unimpressed and vaguely hostile' and 'kill the interloper.' 

Scott stares at Derek for a second, apparently thoroughly unimpressed that Stiles is friends with a man who looks like he wants to murder both of them, and follow that up with kittens for breakfast. But the second passes, and Scott shrugs, pulling his backpack from his shoulder and unzipping it. 

The teachers all packed Stiles's homework into a thick brown envelope with a staple close, and Stiles goes through it. A three-page English paper, a three-page AP Euro paper, a worksheet for Honors Geometry, an Economics worksheet with inexplicable drawings of T-Rexes on it (and Finstock says _he's_ weird; Finstock is clearly the uncontested king of the non sequitur). His Spanish homework is verb conjugation; they're doing boot verbs and irregular this time. And, naturally, Senora Caballero has decided not to omit the vosotros form, despite it not being used by Spanish-speakers he's likely to encounter. 

Stiles spares a moment to wish that he could have done Polish as an independent study. But it would have hurt too much. Maybe if — maybe if everything in his life hadn't taken that sharp turn, seven years ago. 

"Cool," Stiles says. "It's all due Monday? Sweet. I can do, like, half of this on Saturday and the rest on Sunday." 

"Pretty sure your Dad would want you to start it today," Derek says. "And the discipline's good for you." 

Derek's tone — and his voice is always surprisingly a higher tenor sound than Stiles expects to hear — is mild, so Stiles is surprised when he sees that Derek's eyebrows are saying, very quietly, 'Do what I tell you or I will murder your family and use their blood as conditioner.' Derek's eyebrows really, really, really should not be allowed to communicate for the rest of Derek. 

"Dude," Stiles says, eliciting a sharp wince that means _don't call me that_ , "stop with the serial killer eyebrows. I'll do some outlines for the papers tomorrow. Tonight, Scott's here!" 

Which means: leave. But Derek doesn't seem to get the memo, because he just nods. If Stiles still had human senses, he probably wouldn't notice the way Derek's fingers twitch faintly toward Stiles and his heartbeat speeds up, thudding like quick steps on concrete. For some reason, he wants to be touching Stiles. Whatever; werewolves be crazy.

"So, we taking your City Elf through Orzammar, or we playing TF2?" Scott grins, completely unaware of the way Derek's heartbeat is steadily thudding. "I mean, unless you're, like, going to give me whatever you've got and I have to go home."

"Nah, not contagious, but Derek's hanging around the house for a couple of days. We should totally introduce him to the glories of Dragon Age." Stiles pauses. "That, or I should make him roll a Worgen." 

Actually, a Worgen might be a little on point, and Stiles can kind of see Derek being more a fan of the Orcs. Or maybe the Trolls; anybody cool loves Orcs or Trolls. Or the Undead. Go Horde, really. (Though, back when Scott had a free trial account, they'd played mostly Alliance, because Scott.)

"Dragon Age," Scott says, voice firm. Scott never learned to love WoW the way Stiles does. Stiles suspects it's either the monthly subscription or their eternal disagreement about Horde and Alliance. After all, Scott's job with the vet can't possibly pay _that_ much, and he's never supplemented his allowance with a lively business proofing and selling papers. Not to mention he hates asking his mother for anything but the car. 

So the three of them adjourn from the living room to the office, where Dad makes him keep the gaming computer. His laptop's for papers and porn, mostly, but Dad likes to keep an eye and ear on what he plays (and what he tells people online, and what language he picks up). Stiles doesn't actually mind. It's a sign Dad cares, after all, and it gives him ample opportunity to snoop around in the files Dad keeps on lockdown.

* * *

They actually end up starting up _Arkham Aslyum_. Scott suggested that Derek start with the human noble origin in DA, and Stiles had told him, in no uncertain terms, what a monumentally bad idea that would be. When Scott pointed out that according to all the playthroughs Stiles has done, _all_ the Dragon Age origins were traumatic and awful, Stiles had listed off the origins and their various traumas. Derek had given him a look like he'd said the game was actually about eviscerating puppies and tying their intestines into bows.

At one point in the argument, Stiles almost suggests starting up an _Assassin's Creed_ or Metal Gear game, but he's not sure that his temper will be able to handle watching the inevitable failure. On the one hand, it could be funny; on the other, it might just be obnoxious to him. And besides, who doesn't love Batman? 

Derek keeps one eye on Stiles's hands during the entire conversation, his expression somewhere between amused tolerance and 'can you believe this shit,' with just a hint of something Stiles can't identify. Stiles would bridle at the insult, because he is a total pro at having heated but useless arguments without actually getting angry — but Stiles's life is different now.

By the time Dad gets home, Derek has learned better than to just charge in and try to beat people up on Normal mode, and has taken to perching on gargoyles, terrifying the shit out of random mobs, and then swooping down to pick them off one by one. The guy's probably been taking a sort of evil joy in the blatant, if fictional, terror the entire time. He's also frowned heavily, with both mouth and brow line, every time Scott got too close to Stiles. It could be that he doesn't want Stiles to go nuts and decide to rip Scott to shreds, but Stiles hasn't managed to keep his claws stable. Either he can't get angry enough, or he's just not ready for a full beta shift.

Dad stops into the office to put his service weapon in the safe, staring for a moment at the screen.

"Feeling well enough to torture Derek with Batman, I take it." Dad gives him a disapproving frown, though it's half-hearted. "But not feeling well enough to start your homework?"

"It's due Monday. I was going to write outlines tomorrow."

Dad looks at him for a moment. His face turns grim as his gaze travels between Stiles and Scott, and the lack of distance between them. They've pretty much always lived in each other's pockets when they've had the chance, and today's no different, with Scott and Stiles sharing a beanbag chair and occasionally shoving each other off to make room.

Stiles hears his father's healthily slow, squelchy heart begin, in a steady rhythm that picks up speed, to pound. And hates himself.

* * *

Later, when the sun has gone down and Scott has gone home and Dad is in the kitchen, surveying the grocery list (and probably crossing off the carob, the goat cheese, and the yogurt), Derek takes a deep breath in through his nose and lets it out through his mouth. His entire face wrinkles, eyebrows coming down to express just how bad whatever he smelled was, and then he shakes his head. Which, okay, weird, but Derek's a born werewolf. Some weird is pretty much expected.

"Come with me," Derek says, tugging Stiles out of the office and down toward the front door.

"Ugh, god, not another run," Stiles whines, and Derek just glares. He lets Stiles pull on some decent tennis shoes and a light jacket, but then he's tugging Stiles out the door and around the house. "This is the third one today!"

Derek doesn't say anything, just shoves him toward the woods.

"What, did you seriously hate being Batman that much? Who hates being Batman?!"

Derek shoves him again.

"Stop pushing me around, you asshole!"

"Make me," Derek snarls.

So Stiles shoves back, and Derek pushes him again, only this time there are sharp pinpricks in his shoulders, and something in Stiles just _snaps_. It's like a pipe in his brain just burst off the wall. He can feel the steam building inside his head again — _fuck_ Derek Hale for thinking he gets to smack and shove him, fuck Derek Hale for thinking it's okay to use fucking werewolf claws on him, fuck werewolves, fuck being a werewolf, fuck _Derek_ — only when he opens his mouth, he doesn't let out the tea-kettle whistle that was building all yesterday. Instead, he snarls, and his mouth feels hot and sharp and his jaws ache to snap something — like Derek's stupid trachea and spinal column — between his teeth.

Derek just looks at him and smirks.

On instinct, Stiles takes a swipe at him with hands that don't feel right. They feel heavier. Stronger. Derek jerks back at the last minute, but Stiles sees a red line open up on his face, curving across cheek and chin and lower lip. Blood only drips for a minute before the line closes up, Derek's mouth looking kind of swollen for a split second before it looks just the way it did ten minutes ago.

"Good," Derek says. "The human half's harder to listen to when the moon's out."

Stiles stares at him, and realizes that Derek dragged him out here just so he'd do this. So he'd change. Is this what it feels like, to shift? He doesn't really feel different, except maybe that things are sharper, clearer, and they all make him irrationally angry.

Derek's eyes flash blue. He rolls his neck, releasing tension, and then opens his mouth around thick, sharp fangs. His snarl is something closer to a bear's roar, not a lupine sound at all, but something that Stiles knows should be sending him into full on flight instinct, something that should make him feel small and afraid. But he doesn't seem to have flight instincts anymore, doesn't seem able to process being smaller or weaker.

He snarl-roars right back, and within minutes one of them has tackled the other. Stiles isn't even sure which of them starts it; he only tracks motion, the yard and woods streaming past him, and then a body-check. They roll in the grass and the frosted dew, claws tearing into each other, hands leaving bruises. At one point, Derek has him pinned. They're not quite equal in strength — Derek is heavier, stronger — but Stiles is actually _pissed_ , and he's never been the type to take any bullshit quietly.

So he roar-snarls right in Derek's face, and while Derek is still processing the sudden extremely loud noise way too close to his ears, Stiles turns his head and bites Derek's arm. Derek jerks, and Stiles manages to break the other werewolf's hold with an awkward roll of his hips he's never thinking about again.

Derek backs away, then looks him up and down, and even though his mouth has turned down into the single most gorgeous bitchfrown Stiles has seen on a face not belonging to Lydia Martin, Derek's pale gaze and the set of his eyebrows both look more like some obscure pride. The guy really needs to learn how to make normal facial expressions, but at least he doesn't look like a serial killer.

* * *

Stiles spends Friday doing his homework while Derek lurks in the corner of his room, keeping an eye on him. Stiles finds that his temper is ridiculous — it's not even that he's mad at Derek; he's mad at himself for not being able to concentrate. By around mid-afternoon, Derek's heartbeat in his room both makes him want to break things and is kind of weirdly comforting. It's a distraction, and he hates it, but it's a distraction he's familiar with.

Better than being in a room with twenty-four other people and wanting to murder them all. Besides, even if he tried to kill Derek, he probably couldn't.

Eventually he has both his papers written. The Geometry, Economics and Spanish worksheets can wait until the actual weekend. Or whenever he doesn't want to tear his own skin off.

Derek stands up. "Come on. I'm going to throw you around your back yard, let you get some of that energy out before we run tonight."

"You and running," Stiles grumps.

Derek is utterly unaffected by Stiles's foul mood. Honestly, Stiles thinks he kind of enjoys it. There's a smirk in his voice when Derek asks, "What, you'd rather stay at home and do pull ups? 'cause your heartbeat makes you sound like you could at least hunt down a rabbit."

"Ugh, god, would I eat it?"

"Nah," Derek says. "Catch and release. Not that they go far after you rip their skin off."

Stiles nearly trips headfirst down the stairs at the thought of him skinning a little baby bunny rabbit with his bare claws. He can imagine the gouts of blood, the soft fur under his fingertips, the warmth of its pulse and the bright copper tang in the air. A month ago, he'd have been about ready to hurl, and there is definitely some nausea swirling his stomach around and crawling up his esophagus, but there's also a sick, quivering excitement.

"You're the worst."

Derek just looks back at him and smirks again.

* * *

Derek doesn't even have to piss him off to get him to shift. By the time they reach the Preserve — taking Derek's Camaro the whole way, which seriously leaves Stiles kind of high on life — Stiles's heart is a pulse pound in his ears. He can feel his blood surging like some sort of tide, something primal and watchful and hungry pulled up to the surface, until it lingers just underneath his skin, by the moon.

The primal thing wants to run. Stiles arches his back, rolling his shoulders as he prepares to shrug out of his jacket, but Derek thumps him on the back of the head, and Stiles leaves it on.

Derek turns his face into the wind, takes in a breath so deep that Stiles can hear it where he stands. Stiles does the same, is startled to realize that he _likes_ how he can smell almost the whole forest, from its evergreens to the dead leaves and the dirt, and a crazy blend of small furry things. It's the scent of fur that draws him to the parking lot's edge, and he finds himself anxiously rocking on his heels.

Derek's mouth curls, for one fleeting, heartbreaking instant, into something amused. But then he jerks his head toward the woods, eyes flaring from green to blue, glowing in the dim light, and it feels both like permission and a challenge.

Stiles crashes into the woods, finds half a dozen scent trails, and tries vainly to follow them all. Within moments, he hears Derek's footfalls behind him. Stiles grins, baring his teeth, and if it's kind of a sloppy, open-mouthed dog grin, well, whatever.

They don't actually need to talk to decide that they're going to kill something. It's kind of completely crazy, actually, but Stiles turns his nose to the scent of a frightened doe, and Derek's mouth opens, fangs flashing white in the shadowed forest as he breathes in the scent Stiles picked up. And Stiles can see it in the way Derek relaxes, can feel it in the way something in him settles at the thought of working with another 'wolf to take down the deer they smell.

And then Stiles races off after the trail, with Derek circling more quietly behind him. Stiles pinballs around, pinging off trees and forging through underbrush, his feet skidding on leaves, stirring up the scent of dirt, of decay.

It's instinct to let the doe catch his scent, to let her hear him. And it feels so good to run, his limbs burning with the kind of exhaustion that comes with the best kind of workout; he feels powerful, in total control of his life, in total ownership of the trees around him and everything in them. Including the doe. His movements chase her — without her knowing — toward Derek, and Derek swipes at her with one hand. He cuts the deer's leg, and there's the sound of tearing flesh. The doe grunts, snorts, and tries to run in the opposite direction — 

Towards Stiles.

He's not sure which of them is on her first, but one of them scores her flank, while the other cuts her throat.

She makes no sound as she dies, but her eyes roll, looking strangely betrayed. She collapses to the forest floor, and Stiles goes down with her, reaching to bury his hand in the fur, to bury his claws in the flesh. He'll hook in, then pull and tear — 

"Stop that," Derek growls.

Stiles looks up, hackles rising.

Derek's gaze flicks down, then he kneels and places his hands carefully. Stiles watches, intently, as Derek begins to carve into her. Derek's teaching him how, he realizes: is showing him where to cut, how to apply just the right amount of pressure. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the human half gibbers in disgust, horrified, and he's probably going to be sick in the morning, but the front-loaded part of his brain is just curious, and a little bit hungry. 

The other werewolf has just peeled back a flap of skin when his head jerks up. Stiles turns his face toward the cause, opens his mouth to wet the air and make the smell stronger. Humans. Humans and leather and metal. The last scent is frost-sharp on his tongue, but the first is meaty and warm, salty.

Derek snarls again.

They leave the deer. Stiles wants to move toward the humans, wants to investigate these new people in their woods, but Derek snaps at him every time he tries it, smacking him into a tree or just growling. It takes Stiles a long time before he manages to get them prowling closer, undetected. 

But then leaves slide unpredictably under his not-careful-enough feet, and Stiles slides down a hill, windmilling his arms to stay upright. One hunter turns toward him.

There's a single frozen moment: he looks at the hunter; the hunter looks at him. The hunter's eyes glint steely blue in a shaft of moonlight, his hair is cropped short and falls somewhere on that thin line between silver and gold, and his mouth and brow form firm, hard lines.

Then the hunter's arm extends.

Stiles hears the _thwing_ , the _schloop_ , the whistle of _something_ in the air — 

And hits a tree, pinned by the arm.

The pain doesn't really start until the smell of Stiles's blood hits the air, and then he cries out. Something about the sheer agony of it makes the world seem blurrier, less clear, the moon more distant, and Stiles realizes he's shifted back to human.

And the hunter just keeps watching him, expressionless.

Somewhere behind him, uphill, Derek snarls. Stiles feels sick, watches a black-and-gray blur appear almost from nowhere. Derek's eyes are glowing, wild, and he looks at the hunter for only an instant before he snaps the arrow and pulls Stiles's arm off the tree, _through_ the injury. The reverse impalement actually seems to hurt more than being pinned, maybe because Derek's claws are digging into his arm, maybe because it happens slower.

Stiles collapses against Derek's side, unable to stop the low whine of pain. He clutches with his good arm at his bad one, but Derek just shouts, "Run," and gets his shoulder under one of Stiles's arms.

They don't stop running until they reach the Camaro, and then Stiles collapses to the pavement. He remembers feeling feverish that first night, just a few days ago, remembers wanting to lie down on the blacktop and sleep forever.

Tonight, he halfway wants to do that, and halfway wants to track down the asshole who shot him and rip his throat out.

"What the hell was that," he demands of Derek, who is sniffing at his arm, which has already healed.

Derek looks up at him, both his hands still on Stiles's arm, and grunts, "Werewolf hunter. They got here fast."

"Does this kind of crap happen often?"

"It's not supposed to, but yeah," Derek tells him. "He didn't poison the bolt with wolfsbane. If you've healed, you're fine. You calm again?"

"No, I'm not calm! Some asshole just pinned my arm to a tree in a total Robin Hood freakshow!"

Derek's frown turns murderous. Stiles has thought Derek looked like a serial killer before, has thought before that Derek probably ate people's faces off, but tonight, with blood on his face and the light of a full moon making his eyes glow, Stiles realizes: Derek is actually a predator. Hell, _he's_ a predator. And it's only if that hunter is very, _very_ lucky that he won't end up on the menu some full moon night.

"I've — I've got to tell Dad," Stiles says, hoarse. "That kind of crap can't be legal."

Derek's murderous frown relaxes a notch, into a simple 'you're an idiot' frown. "You won't be able to prove anything."

"Sure, I can't prove he shot me with a crossbow. But he's gotta keep that crossbow somewhere."

Derek just looks at him, then shakes his head. "Come on. Let's get you home."

* * *

Dad is waiting for them in the living room when Stiles bangs into the house, keys jangling, dripping hoodie clutched in one hand. He looks tired, and gray, and a little bit like he's become one with the couch.

"Hale," Dad says, and his voice is the kind of calm that actually means Dad has hit Mount St. Helens _and_ Vesuvius eruptions levels of angry. Stiles can tell because he's heard that tone a couple of times before; Derek will probably be able to tell because Dad's heart is hammering almost hard enough to worry about. "Do I need to remind you that in addition to being a werewolf, Stiles is a minor and _my son_?"

Derek doesn't say anything. Which is probably smart, honestly; in his place, Stiles would probably be babbling. He opens his mouth, sucks in a breath, but Derek just rests a hand on his shoulder, and something in Stiles relaxes. Which is weird, because it's not like Derek being near him has ever been relaxing before. Closer to terrifying.

But still, Stiles opens his mouth, and then doesn't say anything.

"If you _ever_ remove Stiles from this house or his school without telling me what the hell's going on again, I'll arrest you for kidnapping." Dad's mouth is a grim, brutal line, and Stiles can hear the absolute truth of that statement, how completely he means it, even in the furious roar of his father's heartbeat. Dad's voice softens, just a touch, as he adds, "Stiles, next time, just text me. _And what the hell happened to your jacket?_ "

"Hunters," Derek says, before Stiles can get the word out.

"It's not hunting season," Dad says, automatic. He knows game hunting season and its regulations even better than Stiles does; as a county Sheriff with a huge wilderness preserve — so huge it's essentially a junction between three different national forests — in his jurisdiction, he makes a point of keeping up with the regs every year. He practically memorizes them.

"It's a full moon," Stiles says, shooting Derek a look that hopefully says _let me handle this._ "Turns out that not only do I have to worry about not mauling my classmates, there are people who want to kill me for, you know, the whole furry, howling-at-the-moon thing."

Dad's gaze flickers to the hoodie, the bloodstains, the torn sleeves. He looks back at Stiles for a second, then looks to Derek. "And you didn't explain this before, because...?"

Derek apparently senses the minefield he's stepped in. His voice is wary when he says, "It's a lot to take in," and even warier when he adds, "His control was my biggest worry. Hunters shouldn't have moved in this quickly — and, as long as we don't hurt humans, they're supposed to leave us alone." 

Stiles notices that _we_ , that _us_. Did Derek ever really just automatically lump them both together bnefore? Stiles can't remember, but he doesn't think so.

That answer doesn't seem to impress Dad. His brows lift and he asks, "Anything _else_ you might have neglected to mention? Other complications of being a werewolf?"

Derek is quiet for a long, long time, before he says, "For now, no, but hunters use wolfsbane. The right kind can kill us, eventually. Mistletoe is poisonous to us. Powdered mountain ash — rowan wood — can keep us in or out of places. Probably not good for us to eat, either, but..."

But you'd have to be pretty crazy to go eating ashes or wood. Dad's brows settle back to their usual spot on his forehead.

"That'll do, for now," Dad tells him. "But you and I are going to have a long talk, later, about exactly what I need to know. Now, come on. I'll want a look at that arm, and you both probably need to eat something."

* * *

After Dad satisfies himself that Stiles's arm has actually healed and isn't hiding some sort of secret infection, they all three eat leftovers. Both Derek and Stiles eat huge portions; Derek goes back for seconds, Stiles for fourths. When Dad arches an eyebrow, Stiles points at his arm. He actually has no idea why he's so hungry, but massive calorie expenditure to heal his arm sounds like a pretty good explanation.

All throughout their midnight meal, Stiles fields excited — and sometimes terrified — texts from Scott. Scott tells a long, nearly nonsensical story in textspeak about driving Allison home from the party, the point of which seems to be that Allison kissed Scott's cheek while her insanely scary mother watched disapprovingly from a window. Scott is over the moon. Stiles is happy for him. He and Allison are definitely gearing up to start a sickeningly cute love story that might have been at home in black-and-white _Pleasantville_ , and Stiles feels more like Harry watching Ron and Hermione than Valjean (or, god forbid, Eponine) watching Cosette and Marius.

Then he realizes: that's right, there was a party tonight. One of Lydia Martin's parties, the kind that everybody's going to be talking about, and even though Scott's invite could have extended to Stiles — everybody knows they're a matched pair, like R2-D2 and C-3PO — he hadn't gone. And, honestly, he kind of doesn't regret it. He might tomorrow, after some sleep and when the moon is quieting down inside him, when he's more human than wolf, when he remembers not to be okay with the fact that he just killed Bambi's mom, and was _completely_ down with skinning and eating her.

He _might_ tomorrow. But he doesn't right now.

* * *

In fact, he doesn't regret his forest run until Monday morning. Disgruntled at being awake (and maybe having stayed up until three or four finishing his homework while trying to bug Derek into telling him why things are so much _easier_ between them now), he picks a still over-the-moon Scott up from home. Scott alleviates some of his sour mood by bringing bacon for breakfast, but traffic wears on Stiles's patience, and by the time they reach school, he's starting to ratchet up to angry again.

It doesn't help, when Scott turns as if magnetized to look at the car Allison is getting out of, that Stiles turns, too. There's something familiar about the smell, not that he can place it.

Then he sees the driver. Stone-faced, hair cropped close to his head, pale skinned with flinty blue eyes — 

The hunter. The man who shot him. Allison's father.

Stiles and the hunter look at each other for a moment that stretches on into forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you it'd be up soonish! I've been employed for a solid month, now, and get to have my monthly one-on-one meeting with my boss tomorrow.
> 
> For those remembering what S1 said about werewolves killing together/for each other, that _is_ in fact what's going on with Stiles and Derek, and yes, I'm going to explore that. But this chapter went on long enough, and has been overdue long enough.
> 
> Now to get the warehouse rave written for "even bad wolves can be good" by Friday...


	4. Chapter 4

The guy with the crossbow looks Stiles up and down, his brow furrowing, but then then a cell phone rings. Stiles feels like his eardrums have burst open, but the hunter calmly reaches over and picks up a gray phone. He flips it open, never dropping his gaze from Stiles, and answers it. Stiles can't catch his words over the rumbling of all the other cars in the school lot, over the buzz and clatter of other students talking, over Scott's heartbeat, over the thundering pound of his own pulse in his ears, but the hunter's mouth twitches into a grim, awful smile before he drives away.

"Man," Scott says, sounding more than a little weirded out. "Allison's dad really must not like the look of you."

Personally, Stiles hopes Allison's dad is driving away to choke on the fact that he shot an unarmed teenager, but considering that smile? He doubts it. And worse, Stiles can't even tell Scott any of that. Not until he's explained the whole werewolf thing.

Scott just grins at him, shoving his shoulder, before he races to catch up with Allison. He doesn't even look back to see if Stiles will follow. Then again, in the summers and years they've known each other, Stiles has always followed. If it weren't for the werewolf thing, if it weren't for who Allison's dad is, he'd be following now.

The first thing he does when he has a spare minute, after Scott and Allison have already headed into English, is call his father. But Dad's cell phone goes to voice mail. So Stiles calls Derek.

"Allison's dad is the guy who shot me," he says, the minute the phone stops ringing.

Derek grunts, his voice a little hoarse, "What." It's not a question, not really — just a noise of incomprehension, with shades of _please let me get the hell back to whatever I was doing_.

"Allison's dad — the father of Allison, or at least the guy who drove her to school this morning, _that_ guy — is the guy the who shot me on Friday night!"

Derek is rock silent as he processes this. Maybe his eyebrows have trouble translating when people talk to him on the phone. After a minute, Derek asks, slowly, like he's not sure he understands, "And… Allison is a friend of yours?" 

If Stiles were calmer, he might roll his eyes. As it is, his heart pounds crazily, and he can feel his fingers burn with the urge to grow claws. They haven't grown yet, but if he doesn't calm down, he'll end up shifting at school. He tries to relax, tries to assure himself he's safe, but it's probably not working.

"Allison is Scott's girlfriend. Maybe. He took her to a party on Friday night."

"Okay," Derek says, sounding a little less strained. "So don't hang around her. Just... avoid going near her if you can."

"But Scott's going to be —"

"That's not your problem. Stick close to your other friends." 

" _What_ other friends," Stiles hisses into the phone. And, naturally, because this is Stiles's life, his voice lisps around fangs.

There's a pause, as Derek and Stiles both process the fact that Stiles has admitted to having no other friends and also that he just popped fangs in the hallway at school. Stiles thinks about broccoli, classical music, and yoga. None of it actually calms him down; none of it makes his fangs go away or makes the pinpricks of his claws under his skin stop.

And then Derek sighs heavily. "Just — stay away from Scott and Allison, for today. _And calm down_. Think of something worth staying human for. Or slam your hand in your locker."

"What?!"

"Pain keeps you human," Derek says, simply, like that is any kind of explanation.

Things that do not keep Stiles human: the urge to slam his head into the nearest hard surface.

* * *

Stiles is actually not used to school being excruciating. When he's not in class with Harris, he basically likes it. It's pretty cool, when he can concentrate — knowing new stuff, doing things? That's all better than just sitting at home playing WoW all day; that's what weekends are for. Plus it's a good chance to hang around with Scott and make sure his eyes get their fill of Lydia.

But he's slowly starting to accept that his life is different now, that he's probably not going to be able to concentrate the way he used to. That he's going to spend the next two years trapped in little rooms full of other people and their heartbeats, their stealth texting, their deodorant, their breath rhythms, the food they ate last night and the people they've touched. And yeah, he's kind of going to want to murder them all just to make it quiet down (although, Stiles suspects, death will probably just mean _new_ smells to contend with).

But that doesn't mean he's actually going to kill anybody, and it doesn't mean he can't lock down salutatorian.

Once he's spent a few quiet minutes in a little-used stairwell, letting his heartbeat slow, calming his sense of _threat_ , his claws and fangs have retreated enough to let him make his way to English class. He even manages to make it there just after the warning bell rings.

And classes are easier than they were right before the full moon. Sure, everyone's a distraction and everyone drives him a little crazy. But Stiles is getting better at pretending to himself that they aren't. The primal thing inside him watches Mr. Apison — not just because Mr. Apison likes to move around his classroom while Stiles is expected to stay still (ha), but because he's an authority figure. The knowledge that Mr. Apison keeps his class well in hand makes it easier for Stiles to relax, and after about twenty minutes, he finds himself automatically listening more closely for him.

Senora Caballero is the same. In fact, Stiles skates through his classes until lunch by letting the thing that the moon pulls be pulled towards his teachers.

After lunch, though, are study hall and then chemistry.

Study hall, Stiles spends Googling the Argents. Turns out the guy he saw is Chris Argent, a well-known firearms supplier for law enforcement. Of _course_ he is. It gives him a reason to travel, and gives him an awesome cover story. And if the cops see whatever it is that draws Argent to the werewolves in an area, they're probably pretty twitchy, probably want to be better armed.

He wonders if his father has given Chris any business. He hopes to god not, and it doesn't even really seem likely; it's not like Beacon County is any kind of hotbed of crime. There's people growing weed in the woods, but they're generally not very bright, and they're hardly well-armed. Mostly traffic issues, occasional poaching, kids setting fires in the Preserve, two meth labs in the last eight years. Not anything Dad really needs to overhaul the Beacon County Sheriff's Office's armory for.

Then again, now that Dad knows about werewolves — 

Stiles resolves to tell his father about Chris the first chance he gets.

Chemistry is basically the twenty millionth circle of hell, but before winter break, chemistry was basically the nineteen millionth circle of hell, so that's hardly much of a change. Stiles sits down next to Erica Reyes rather than Scott, who has gravitated once again to Allison. She doesn't bother with make-up or hair products, or basically anything but lumpy sweatshirts and unscented deodorant. Her sweat smells faintly medicinal, and she smells kind of salty, like she's been crying, but in all, she's a nice break for his senses.

She stares at him, wide-eyed, but doesn't say anything. She just scoots over to make room and then looks quickly back at her books. All throughout class, she darts quick, wondering glances at him. Stiles wonders what the hell that's even about, but it's probably better to worry about it all later.

And as much as Harris tries to make Stiles's life miserable, it all seems a little easier when he sits next to Erica.

* * *

After class, he calls Dad again, but Dad's phone goes to voice mail. Again. Stiles ends the call, stares at the cell for a second, and then frowns. After a half-second of deliberation, he calls dispatch. He uses the desk number, not the emergency line.

"Hey, Caroline," he says off dispatch's weary greeting, elongating the _hey_ until it takes up a full beat or two, "It's Stiles. My Dad's phone been's going to voicemail most of the day. Just checking in."

"You know I can't tell you where the Sheriff is or what he might be doing," Caroline says with the exact same tone she uses when he asks for her apple crumb pie recipe. "Police business, Stiles."

"But he's alright, right?" Stiles persists. "He's not in, I don't know, some laundromat-turned-OK-Corral, right? Or a _burger joint_?"

Caroline has a heavy, husky smoker's laugh, which she turns on him now. "You watch too much _Breaking Bad_ , kiddo."

That's the standard cop rejoinder every time he flails about his father's safety. Usually followed up by — nope, here it is:

"Beacon Hills is a _good_ town, and Beacon's a good county. None of that crap around here, I promise you; he's just busy."

Stiles doesn't bother pointing out that he's seen a grand total of two episodes of _Breaking Bad_ , or that considering he was bitten by a werewolf a little over a week ago and was pinned to a tree just three days ago by a man about to try to sell the BCSO new guns, she can't make those promises.

But he's not going to get anything more out of her, so he just huffs out a huge sigh and says, "Alright, alright. If you hear from him before I do, let him know I really need to talk to him?"

"Sure thing," Caroline says. "You drive home safe, now."

"Yeah, yeah," he tells her, because he's not exactly known for reckless driving. Sure, he's only had his license since last summer, but nobody's ever even pulled him over — and not because of who his father is.

"I mean it, kiddo. The animals have been acting up lately. We've got three times the number of hit deer in the last two weeks than we had in the last year."

Jeez. Okay, Stiles might have killed and tried to eat Bambi's Mom, but the rogue alpha has spent the last, what, two weeks scaring her and all the rest of Bambi's little forest friends into suicide-by-car? Stiles can't help but think that's worse.

* * *

Dad calls when Stiles is standing at the butcher's counter in the local grocery, not sure if he's relishing all the meat and flesh scents he picks up with every breath, or if they make him feel faintly ill.

Stiles answers with a, "Dad! Finally! I've tried to call you like three times today." He doesn't add a 'what gives,' but it probably makes its way into his tone.

"Been out in the Preserve," Dad says, while Stiles raises both his eyebrows and points at a couple cuts of steak. Conrad nods in reply, picking up the steaks and wrapping them in paper before putting them on the scale. "How strong is Derek's stomach?"

"Uh," worst question to ask while Stiles is in public. Or, well, one of the worst. "Well, he hunts, and he knows how to skin a deer?"

"...we're going to need to talk about that, aren't we," Dad says, voice flat. "Stiles, that's _poaching_. I'll get us game hunting licenses in the summer. Anyway, give Derek a call for me, invite him to the house."

His life has seriously taken a turn for the surreal. Stiles says, "Uh, yeah. Okay. Conrad, throw another steak on the —"

Dad's voice sounds exhausted when he says, "Stiles, rain check on that steak."

It's not just the fact that Dad is turning down steak, which they practically never have anymore. His voice is so sad, so tired, so flat, that Stiles flashes back to the days following Mom's diagnosis. It's quick, but it's a sharp hook in his stomach, tugging everything up toward his throat with an ache, before he takes a deep breath and tries to settle. 

He can't help the way his heart races, though, and he lisps a little when he says, "Okay. I can do us some turkey burgers, or we can do, like, breakfast for dinner. Chicken and waffles?"

"Breakfast for dinner sounds good," Dad says. He sounds a little warmer, a little relieved, and Stiles feels his heartbeat slow as he relaxes. But still, Stiles knows his father's going to be looking at the locked liquor cabinet all night, and if it's got him this rattled, Stiles isn't sure he can blame him.

Derek answers his phone on the second ring. He sounds a little breathless when he asks, " _What_ , Stiles?"

"Dad wants your surly ass at our house for dinner tonight," Stiles tells him. "He spent the day in the Preserve."

"It's about a body," Derek says. Then he says, "Does he think I had something to do with it?"

"I don't _think_ so. Dad's not super happy with you, but I don't think he thinks you're, like, a crazy ax murderer. You're not, are you?"

Derek is silent for a long time, but the silence feels more like Stiles's own residual guilt than like Derek is trying to hide something, or trying to find a way not to say that yeah, actually he is. Whatever. Stiles just sighs. "Whatever. Pretty sure Dad's not inviting you to our house so he can arrest you. Pick up a decent single-malt on your way over, will you? Single-malt, not a blend!"

* * *

Derek shows up two hours after Stiles gets home. His eyes are steady on the house, but his nostrils twitch, and Stiles can hear how fast his heart is going. He's wary, if not outright nervous.

"Come on in," Stiles says. "I'm doing the bacon, Dad's got the waffle iron. You want to scramble some eggs?"

Derek stares at him for a second, before he nods and steps into the house. He shoves a box into Stiles's hands for a second so he can shrug out of the jacket and leave it on a hook in the entry hall, but he reclaims the white rectangular box and follows Stiles back to the kitchen. He doesn't say anything the whole way, but for some reason, it bothers Stiles less than it might have last week.

Something has changed since Friday, and Stiles isn't sure what it is.

"Glenlivet," Dad says when Derek sets the box on the kitchen table. He raises an eyebrow.

Derek replies, with surprising ease, "Stiles said to bring you a decent single-malt."

"Glenlivet's not what I'd call 'decent,'" Dad says, and shoots a look at Stiles.

"You sound like you needed it, and single-malt has more ellagic acid than wine," Stiles shrugs, returning to the stove so he can keep an eye on the bacon. "Why do you think I haven't been bugging you to start drinking two glasses a day?"

"Well," Dad says, and even if his mouth is stern, there's a grin in his eyes, "I _thought_ it was because my kid didn't have a death wish."

"So Derek thinks you wanted him here about a body in the woods." Stiles reaches out to flip the bacon.

"Derek thinks right," Dad says. He pours batter into the waffle iron and closes it, then flicks a look at Derek. His heartbeat is steady, calm, much calmer than Derek's. "Is that why he brought me Glenlivet? Trying to butter me up in case I think he did it?"

"The cashier recommended it." Derek shrugs, before he says, "I don't really bother drinking."

That gets a startled look from Dad. "Don't bother?"

Derek shrugs again. "Werewolf healing affects the liver."

Dad stares for a minute before he chuckles. "No such thing as a drunk werewolf, then. Stiles, your college years..."

"Yeah, yeah." College is going to suck. He's probably going to be the eternal sober guy stuck around the drunks.

"There are ways," Derek says. "But since you're working around or through the healing, they're dangerous. I've never bothered." He adds, in a dark mutter he probably doesn't expect Stiles to pick up, something about having enough of bad decisions.

Stiles doesn't say anything; he just adds the bacon to a plate. Dad politely pretends Derek isn't muttering to himself in a corner and just keeps pressing waffles.

* * *

Dinner conversation is a weird blend of discussing Chris Argent — Allison's probable Dad, considering the shared last name and the fact that he was driving her to school, though he could maybe be an uncle; Derek tenses up during the discussion of Argents in specific, but he seems slightly more relaxed about hunters in general. In the sense that his pulse only elevates by a few beats per minute and he smells more like caution than sour fear and sharp anxiety — and werewolf trivia. Stiles mentions avoiding Scott and Allison all day, and sitting next to Erica in chemistry.

"Erica Reyes?" Dad asks, stiffening. His heart has started to pound again.

"Yeah... what happened?"

Dad picks up the manila folder next to his plate and offers it to Derek. "We found the body of Orfeo Reyes in the Preserve early this morning. Derek, I've got copies of some of the crime scene photos, and a few of the sketches. You think you can tell if it was an animal or... whoever the hell bit my son?"

Derek is still for a very long moment. Then he reaches out and takes the folder in his hands. He flips it open, starts paging through the photographs and sketches on graph paper. They're glossy. Stiles leans over to see, ignoring his Dad's sharp look, and the thing that turns his stomach is that they're not grossing him out.

He knows, in a distant way, that the sight of the spilled intestines, the flayed Achilles tendon, the claw marks in the man's throat should disgust him. Should send him up from the table and running, with his hands clapped over his mouth, to the bathroom. The fact that he knows exactly how he or Derek could do it only makes it worse: he can see himself or Derek going for the thigh, the ankle, then ripping the throat out and going for the soft, tender belly. It'd only be a little more trouble for them.

"This was definitely… this was one of —" But Stiles can't say _us_. Because he's not like that. Even if it doesn't turn his stomach like it should, even if he wanted to eat Bambi's Mom, he's not like that, right? And Derek's not like that, either.

"A werewolf," Dad says, tone flat. "This 'alpha' killed Orfeo Reyes."

"Yeah," Derek says. He sounds a little hoarse, but not like he's about to throw up.

Dad leans forward, toward Derek, and asks, in as gentle a tone as Stiles has heard him use, "Derek, I need to know how sure you are that Laura didn't do this and didn't bite my son."

Derek's pulse goes crazy. His scent changes from anxious to stressed, furious, the cold medicinal shock of an adrenaline rush. He practically flings himself away from the table, standing up so quickly that he knocks his chair over. He widens his stance, leaning back toward Dad, and slams the folder down on the dining room table with a loud slap, but Stiles doesn't hear wood crack. Derek's hands splay over the folder, and for a second, Stiles sees his eyes flash blue and his claws come out, before Derek gets his labored breathing and his angry face under control.

"Laura didn't do this," he snarls. "I _know_ she didn't do this, she _couldn't_ have done this, how can you even —"

"Derek." Dad's heart races, probably at a supernatural predator suddenly being very, very angry, but his voice is calm and soft. "She's the only alpha you've ever mentioned. How are you sure?"

And Derek's pulse stays quick, but not the thunderous pound of before. He draws in a few breaths, lets them out in shocky, shaking bursts.

"Because I buried Laura last week," he says. "She was his first victim."


	5. Chapter 5

Both Dad and Derek deflate at Derek's admission. Dad relaxes, the caution leaving his scent, his pulse slowing, and Derek seems to calm, too. He still reeks, stale and sour, of distress and exhausted grief, but at least the hot, wild scents of rage and adrenaline have cooled to a bitter anger. Stiles blinks, and realizes he's standing behind Derek, has one hand on Derek's shoulder and one hand cupping the back of his neck. He spares a distant moment to wonder when that happened, why he did it.

Derek shudders under his touch, but slowly relaxes into him. Stiles pulls the hand away from his neck, slides the hand on Derek's shoulder down to his arm as he bends over to pick up the chair Derek knocked over. When he's got it righted, he pushes at Derek's shoulders, and the older werewolf sits, heavy and still shaking.

Stiles looks up, meets Dad's eyes. Dad doesn't look as sick as Stiles feels, but there's still something faintly stricken in his gaze. Dad isn't just seeing Derek Hale, twenty-something werewolf who just lost his sister and alpha. Dad's seeing Derek Hale, teenaged boy, who just lost almost his whole family. And he's seeing, probably, Stiles the night Mom — the night —

"Ah, hell, son," Dad says, and moves toward them. He comes around the dining room table slowly, presses his hand against Stiles's shoulder, then reaches down and does the same to Derek. "How long?"

Derek's doesn't say anything for a long time, just keeps shaking. When he finally speaks, he sounds strained, like talking is hard. Stiles can hear the subtle harmonics of a growl in his voice, and squeezes Derek's shoulder tightly, a soft message that he's here — and not to growl at Dad.

"Last Monday." 

The day Stiles even met him. Freakin' christ. Werewolves, man. Stiles can understand why Derek wouldn't have mentioned the whole 'my sister is dead' thing, but how much must it have hurt him to be Stiles's werewolf Yoda, knowing that the one who'd killed his sister had bitten Stiles? Hell, how much must it have hurt to help Stiles at all?

"Alright, Derek." Dad sighs, squeezes Derek's shoulder just the way Stiles did, and then says, "We'll get him. You hear me? We'll get him. One way or another, I'm not about to let this bastard run around my county and my Preserve."

Derek shakes one last time, but then he looks up, and his expression is hard, focused. And Stiles begins to understand that for Derek, this is what pain and grief really look like. When Stiles was eight and all the arrangements were made, when they came home from the hospital, he'd tried so hard to be perfect. Like if he could just be a good kid, better than the kid who made everything so much harder on Mom, then maybe it would stop hurting, maybe he wouldn't lose Dad. This is Derek's version of being perfect: if he can just focus, if he can just turn himself into some kind of weapon and fire himself at the alpha, kill the man who killed his sister, maybe it won't hurt so much.

After that, Dad breaks open the Glenlivet.

* * *

These are the things Derek knows for sure about the rogue alpha: the alpha is male, adult, shading into middle age, smells a little of disinfectant and very, very strongly of crazy. Everything else is lost in the scent of fur and smoke.

Dad gives Derek an incredulous look. "You can _smell_ crazy?"

"Yes," Derek says. Then: "No. It depends on whether it's a physical problem or not. And I could smell Stiles's Adderall, when he was still taking it."

Dad gives Stiles a look that says he'll be explaining just why he stopped, but then he turns back to Derek. For his part, with a part of his brain that isn't thinking about the rogue alpha, Stiles wonders if that means he could smell Erica's seizures coming on. Dad asks, "And that's all you know?"

"Yeah."

Dad pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. "Fine." After a moment, he says, "Derek, with these hunters in town, and with the circumstances… We've got a guest room. You're welcome to use it. I'd _like_ you to use it."

* * *

Stiles desperately wants to ask just how Derek kept his control so rock solid during dinner, how he didn't lash out, how he only popped claws for an instant. But he was only bitten because Laura died, and Derek just had a total grief meltdown. So Stiles just shows him to the guest room, changes the sheets on the bed, and then heads to his room.

He's on Skype with Danny Mahealani, trying to get Erica Reyes's number, when Derek wanders into the room. Derek's stripped down to his jeans. It's an incredibly good look on him; Stiles is actually kind of seriously jealous about how good shirtless looks on Derek Hale. Forget the toned biceps and broad shoulders, his abs are perfectly defined. 

When Derek wanders into the camera's line of sight, Danny raises both his brows.

Stiles has a feeling he knows what has to happen if he wants Erica's number. He sighs, feeling like an asshole, and says, "Hey, Derek, come meet my friend Danny."

Derek's eyebrows ask a very pointed question. Stiles tries to say something similarly pointed with his own eyebrows and gestures for him to come on over.

"Danny, this is Derek Hale. Derek, meet Danny Mahealani. His mom's on the county commission."

Danny waves, looking shell-shocked. Derek just raises an eyebrow before he settles himself onto Stiles's bed, cracking the cover on one of the criminology journals Dad gets mailed to the department but somehow always ends up bringing home.

After about twenty seconds of additional text chat over Skype, Danny texts him Erica Reyes's home phone number. Stiles enters it into his phone, then ends the chat with Danny. He turns around and heads over to his own bookshelf, rummaging through until he finds what he's looking for.

 _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_. He has both a hardcover and paperback edition, but he offers the hardcover to Derek.

Derek gives him a flat look. "The one where his teacher is a werewolf."

"Believe it or not," Stiles says, "this one's always been one of my favorites. I mean, for one, Sirius was just cool. For another, it's one of the only serious books that ends unambiguously well, and its biggest lesson is how we have to focus on things that make us happy if we want to get over being afraid. Total comfort food for your brain."

Which Derek seems desperately in need of.

After a minute that lasts forever, Derek takes the book from his hand and sets the journal aside. He opens to the first page — the very first page, as in, the back of the title page — and looks down, starting to read.

Stiles piles onto the bed as well, settling in next to Derek. He bundles in close, so close he can feel the heat off Derek's skin, almost wonders if Derek can feel the heat off his. The weirdest thing about it is how weird it _doesn't_ seem. He knows it's not normal, knows he doesn't really touch people the way he wants to touch Derek, but it still feels right, that he should be close to Derek. Especially now, when Derek's so obviously hurting.

"Derek?" He asks, quiet, as he digs his phone out of his pocket and their arms meet.

Derek, now methodically reading every single word on the third page, replies, "Uh-huh?"

"Did we, like, I don't know, form a pack? Maybe?"

Derek doesn't say anything. He closes the book on his thumb, looks up across the room, out the window, anywhere but at Stiles while he thinks, and while Stiles fidgets with his phone, calling up Erica's contact screen and then cancelling it before dialling.

"Yes," Derek says at last. "At the full moon."

"Because we shifted together and ran around like, I don't know, wolf buddies?"

Derek's eyebrows shift gear to _murder_ for a second at the words 'wolf buddies,' but he doesn't say anything about it. Instead, he says, "Because we hunted together. One of us killed for the other. It creates a bond."

So Derek doesn't remember who got the kill cut, either. Well, at least Stiles isn't alone in that.

He doesn't know what to think of the rest of it. What to think about the idea that killing a deer somehow turned him and Derek into more than just Werewolf Yoda and Luke Skywalker. It feels more like it turned them into Luke and Leia, but even that doesn't sound right, doesn't catch all the nuance. Maybe Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade — 

Stiles cuts that thought the hell off at the knees and sends it to the ninth circle of Don't Even hell. Stiles knows what eventually happens to Luke and Mara, no matter how grudgingly they worked together at first. Derek's pretty and all, but nope. Stiles is so not going there. Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, that's who they are, with shades of Chewbacca for both of them.

He pulls up Erica's contact screen and hits the dial button.

A woman's voice answers, brassy and brittle, and he can hear the strain in it even over the phone, which makes some kind of weird high-pitched whine in the background of the call. "Hello, this is the Reyes residence, Monica speaking."

"Uh, hi, Ms. Reyes," he says. "This is Stiles. I was wondering if Erica was available?"

He hears a woman sob in the background as Monica goes silent for a moment before she says, "How do you know Erica?"

"We go to school together."

"Listen, _Stiles_ ," Monica says, voice suddenly harsh, "now is the not to time to mess around with my niece. I know how cruel you kids can be —" 

"I just want to talk to her," Stiles says. He's not sure if he sounds earnest, but, well, it's how he feels. Maybe Monica will believe him. "I was just gonna offer her a ride to school tomorrow, if she's going. Straight to school, no detours." 

Probably. Stiles remembers not exactly being able to handle school eight years ago. He didn't go for like a week. If she wants to go somewhere else, get away from it all? Well, that's what cars are for.

He owes her that much for using her during Chemistry today. And it would've been nice to have somebody do that for him, years ago. Might have gotten him out of Dad's hair.

After a minute, he hears footsteps, and then Monica's voice calls for Erica. More footsteps, the rattle of plastic and the whoosh of air, and then Erica's voice says, "Hello?"

"Hey, Erica. It's Stiles," he says.

Erica's completely silent for a second. He could swear he doesn't even hear her breathe. When she speaks, her voice is cautious. "Hi, Stiles."

"Listen, I uh. If you're going, do you want a ride to school tomorrow?"

Silence from Erica, but Stiles hears footsteps, and then a door closes.

"I don't know that I'm going," Erica admits.

"That's cool. I can give you a ride to wherever you wanna skip to. Or, uh. Are you staying at home with your mom?"

Erica waits all of three seconds before she says, almost brisk, "So you've heard."

"Busted," Stiles says. "Sheriff's kid, and a town like this... Yeah, word travels fast. I'm not going to tell you I'm sorry, because it's bullshit and it doesn't make anything better. But tomorrow, if you wanna try, I'll take you to school, and if you don't, I'll drop you wherever you wanna go."

"Did you know in Chemistry? Is that why you sat by me? Wow, that poor sick kid's dad just died. I guess I'll sit next to her and totally weird her out, see if that can make her feel better?" Erica sounds breathless, and a little angry. Which, considering this is Erica Reyes, probably means she's in the thrall of an incandescent rage and is plotting his gruesome death.

"No — no, Chemistry was me being kind of a dick. My ADHD was being really bad, so I sat next to you because you're quiet."

"That's a dick move," Erica observes.

"Well, hopefully this one isn't."

A thoughtful pause, and then Erica says, "Tomorrow. My house. Seven o'clock."

"I don't know where you live," he admits, so she rattles off her address. 

Stiles enters it into his phone when they've hung up, then squirms until he's even closer to Derek. He rests his chin on Derek's shoulder, like it feels natural to do so — it _does_ feel natural — and tries to read along with Derek. But the angle is weird, so instead he finds himself listening to Derek's heartbeat and breathing, and the world outside his house, and falls asleep that way.

* * *

Stiles wakes alone in his bed, tucked carefully under the covers. Neither Derek nor the copy of _Prisoner of Azakban_ is anywhere to be seen. Before he left, Derek must have plugged Stiles's phone in, because it's sitting on his bedside table. He swipes it awake and cringes at the sudden harsh glare. Through his own squinting, he can barely make out the time.

An hour before he'd have needed to get up, anyway. Stiles is tempted to go back to sleep, to bury himself in a coccoon that smells of nothing more than him and Derek, and then let the world fall away into fuzzy cotton. But if he does that, he knows he'll never surface. Or at least he won't surface in time.

So he groans and rolls out of bed, landing on the floor with a thump. After a minute to disentangle himself from his sheets, he pads into the bathroom. Somebody left one of the hall lights on, and though the colors are faded, the room is so bright that so Stiles spends a moment trying to turn the bathroom light _off_ to escape the eye-searing brightness before he puts the toilet seat up. He flicks the light on just before he steps into the shower, out of habit, and then immediately turns it back off because holy death of his retinas, Batman.

He soaps up in that muted brightness, shoves a tiny amount of shampoo on his head and just kind of works it over the buzzcut, just to make sure his head doesn't get greasy. When he's got all the soap away, he leans forward, rests his arms against the cool tile and lets the hot water hit his shoulders and slide down.

It's pretty much automatic to reach down. A way to start his day that doesn't make him resent having to be at school at a set time. He goes slow at first, but doesn't bother fantasizing or even really paying much attention to what he thinks about, just focuses on the way it feels. The fact that his brain has decided to think about ridiculous ab muscles, or broad shoulders, or tree-trunk biceps, and his dick feels awesome right now? Totally something to worry about later. Or maybe not at all.

Stiles washes his hands first after, because otherwise he'll just spread the smell around and then he'll be smelling it all day. Then he soaps up again, just to make sure the smell doesn't stick, before rinsing with cold water and stepping out of the shower. He flicks the fan on, but not the light, as he leaves.

* * *

Scott is not thrilled to be woken up and told that they're going to Erica Reyes's house super early, and might in fact skip the whole day.

"'m not skipping with a girl I don't even know," Scott mumbles while he buckles his seatbelt. "What if Allison hears? And what's wrong with you? You sat next to her in Chemistry yesterday, and now you might skip school to hang out with her?"

Stiles shrugs. Scott'll hear about the body in the woods soon enough, anyway, and he's smart enough to put together 'Sheriff's son skips school with random girl maybe a day after a body has been found.'

"Then I'll drop you at the high school," Stiles says. "Maybe Erica doesn't even want to be around you anyway."

Scott gives him a vaguely judgmental look.

* * *

Turns out Erica lives in a nice, two-story cookie-cutter house. It looks pleasant enough, but Stiles can imagine just how hard it is to be there right now. Erica's apparently not doing so great with hanging out in the house where her father used to live and doesn't anymore; she's waiting for them on the steps in a sweater and jeans, with a bookbag at her feet and her hair pulled back in a messy braid.

She stands up as soon as Stiles pulls up near the drive and makes her way to the Jeep. Scott has to get out of the Jeep to let Erica crawl into the backseat. Stiles waves at the green-eyed blonde staring at them from a window.

"Your Mom?" He asks Erica before he starts the Jeep again.

"My Aunt Monica."

"She really seems to hate me," Stiles says.

Erica doesn't say anything. Which… well, at least she's not going to lie to reassure him, or something. Her heart's rabbit fast, though.

Scott, bless him, is the one who says, "So, are you guys going to school, or what?"

Erica is stone silent until the first red light after Stiles leaves her neighborhood. Eventually, she says, with her chin tilted up as if her pride won't let her shrink today, almost angry but smelling mostly of sadness and fear, "I'm going to class."

Stiles can admire that white-knuckled unwillingness to admit that anything's wrong. That utter disdain for any weakness in herself, that unwillingness to acknowledge that she needs help or comfort. It's a trait she shares with Derek.

* * *

Stiles and Scott stick close to Erica through first and second period. Erica seems fine, if shaky, in English. But during history, her pulse starts to pound and she starts to sweat. Stiles doesn't say anything about it, but he's not entirely surprised when she comes up to him after second period and informs him that he's either taking her the hell away from here, or she's walking.

Stiles doesn't ask her if she's actually good to walk right now. He doesn't know how her epilepsy works, and he's pretty sure she'd punch him for the question. He'd probably even deserve it.

Instead, he sends a text to Derek that says he's leaving school, and to meet him at Hoedekin's, then tells Erica, "Sure. Let's hit up the diner and see what kind of trouble we can get into downtown."

The face Erica makes when Derek squeezes Stiles's shoulder and slides into the booth next to him, so close his bare arms are touching Stiles, really surprises him. Her eyes widen, and then her jaw tightens. She smells suddenly like anger and anxiety, shading into sharp fear, which, not an unusual combination for Erica, he doesn't think, but now they're immediate, and judging from the way her heartbeat picked up, they're all aimed at either him or Derek. He thinks back for a second to the way she'd been stone-silent in the car, the way she'd wanted so badly not to be weak, and realizes his mistake.

"Erica, this is Derek Hale. I texted him because knows what you're going through," Stiles tells her. "And we'll look less suspicious with an adult."

Erica's gaze flicks to Derek, then flicks all over Derek, and her scent warms a little. Stiles doesn't blame her one bit for that, though Derek's heart rate speeds up at the scrutiny.

* * *

She doesn't break down until they've settled into the town's best used book store. 

Stiles sits with his coffee on broken-backed old couch with a worn-out copy of _The Lightning Thief_ and half-tugs Erica to follow. She's holding onto a copy of _Julie_ , her knuckles actually white and her heartbeat thunderous, and Stiles doesn't even really think about squeezing her shoulders. Derek, sensing at least Stiles's distress, crams himself in on the couch with them. He seems reluctant to touch Erica, but Derek reaches over and puts one huge hand on the back of Stiles's neck.

It's weird, how comforting that is. 

But then Erica reaches some part early in the book and starts to cry, silently, sobs shaking her shoulders while her voice makes no sound. Stiles just leans a little against her and doesn't know what to say. There's nothing he can say that's at all true, or that she doesn't know.

Finally, he says, "I know how much it sucks. I know it feels like no one can possibly get it, but I've been there. And — and I _know_ it's awful, and I'm _sorry_." There's no explaining that half of why he's sorry is that it's his shitty rogue alpha that did this, and god only knows why. "And I know that doesn't help. But it does get better, Erica. Eventually."

"He's an insurance agent," Erica says, with a hitch in her breath. "What was he even doing near the woods?"

That's the million dollar question, or close enough to it.

* * *

Stiles drops Erica off right around the time school should end. She trudges up the walk to the front stairs with her shoulders slumped. Stiles watches her until she makes it inside the house. Watches until scary blonde Aunt Monica shows up to look out the window at him. He waves again, then drives away. Maybe if he's just… consistently not evil, Scary Aunt Monica will stop with the constant suspicion.

Dad's waiting for him when he gets home with more groceries in tow. He's been practically cleaning the house of food, his appetite suddenly even greater. It could be a growth spurt, or it could be the Adderall suddenly not working, but he's pretty sure it's also because werewolves burn a lot of calories with their glowing eyes, their growing nails, the healing. With both him and Derek in the house, grocery runs are going to be pretty frequent, he's guessing.

"So, Stiles," Dad says, in a tone that says _I know, and you know that I know, and I know that, too_. "How was school?"

Wow, he is just not on his game with the sneaky this month. Stiles debates lying for all of about forty seconds before deciding that Dad can't really get onto him for trying to help someone out. And it's not like anybody actually expected Erica to attend school at all, much less make it through a whole day.

"In my defense, we tried to go to school. She made it through two periods before we bailed," Stiles says.

"She could have gone to the office and called a relative to come get her," Dad points out. "Stiles, I understand why you did it. But you can't blow off school. I know it seems like school matters less than these — these werewolf shenanigans, but it doesn't."

Good grades and extracurricular involvement, Dad had told him more than once, covered a multitude of sins any highschooler might commit, or at least blunted adults' perception of those sins. Even on into adulthood, plenty of bad people went without detection for years by going through the motions. Dad had been ranting about undetected serial killers and how people who seemed good weren't necessarily so, the 'he seemed so normal until we found disembodied heads in his freezer' phenomenon, but Stiles suspected that social blindness would work in favor for a young werewolf.

Get good enough grades, for example, and hopefully teachers wouldn't notice if he took the full moon of every month off.

And, well, it wasn't like he could write his college admissions essays on his struggles to re-integrate into human society after being bitten by a werewolf.

Dad just looks at him for a second, watching his face the way he always does. After a moment, Dad says, "You do still want to go to college, don't you? Bachelor's in criminology, then onto a police academy —?"

"Yeah, Dad, my plan's still the same," Stiles sighs. Being a werewolf has definitely not changed that.

"Then this doesn't happen again. If the school calls me again to tell me you've missed classes, it'll mean your keys and your phone."

"What about, like, actually important werewolf stuff?"

Dad gives him a look that says he expects Stiles to keep his important werewolf stuff for after school hours if at all possible. Stiles sighs and says, "Okay, Dad. I understand."

"Good." Dad gives him that closed-mouth, surprisingly pleased smile, and then says, "You're a good kid, Stiles. You should have talked to me about maybe taking the day off, but I understand why you wanted to. It was a good impulse."

Oh god, the primal thing inside him is pretty much rolling around in even a modicum of Dad's approval. Just that brief moment of praise is leaving Stiles with a ridiculous amount of warm fuzzies inside his chest. This is totally using his brand new kind-of-animal instincts against him. It should be illegal. 

So Stiles rolls his eyes and says, "Ugh, Dad, _feelings_. Let's talk about something else."

"Then why don't we talk about the assignments you missed. Or about how your chemistry grade is going to drop five points for missing today, since Mr. Harris feels it would be unfair to give you an opportunity to make work you missed for no good reason, and he's not wrong?"

Annnnd now the primal, moon-pulled, okay call it what it is, the _wolf thing_ inside him cringes at Dad's disapproval. Great. Sure, his life's gotten a lot more interesting, but oh _god_ why did interesting have to mean weird?

* * *

Derek doesn't come wandering shirtless into Stiles's room that night. After a while, when Stiles realizes that Derek's scent has mostly faded from his sheets and blankets and he kind of misses it, he grabs his blanket and wanders silently through the house. It's probably midnight or one by this point, and Scott and Danny have both texted him multiple times to let him know what rumors have started (and Scott invites Stiles and Erica to the bowling double-date Lydia roped him and Allison into). 

Dad's killed all the lights tonight, like he usually does, but streetlight blares in muted orangey from the windows, and Stiles can easily see every piece of furniture or clutter in his way, and how the doors and windows have all been locked down. Despite how clearly he can see, the walls almost seem to ripple in the shadows. Everything feels faintly dreamlike and he feels almost like he's being pulled. The house is silent, but in the space between his own heartbeats, he could swear he hears the whisper of instruction.

Derek must have heard his heartbeat moving around, because he opens the door and stares at Stiles before Stiles can even knock.

"What," Derek grunts.

And Stiles begins to understand why the whole house seems so dreamlike.

The thing inside him wants Scott dead, wants Derek dead, and after Derek, his dad.

"Derek, something's wrong," he says, and the world _lurches_. He's going off script, off the rails his alpha so thoughtfully laid out for him; he feels sick to his stomach and his heart starts to race. He feels the itch and burn as his face shifts, the warm and strength in his hands as his claws grow.

Then his throat closes, and words cease to mean much.

Derek backs away, crouching slightly as he prepares to have to take Stiles down. 

Instinct propels him forward, snarling. He swipes at Derek's face, at his throat, but Derek just moves out of the way and brings an elbow down hard on Stiles's shoulder. Stiles hears the bone crack, hits the floor so hard his nose pops and starts to bleed, but the damage heals just after the pain hits.

He's on his feet in seconds. His alpha wants this packmate dead. Derek hasn't accepted authority, doesn't listen, won't _help_ — he has to die, and anything that keeps Stiles from obeying, anything that makes Stiles not want to obey, has to die with him.

Derek snaps, "Stiles!" right before he backhands him.

Stiles hits a wall with a crash. It hurts, and it feels weird to know he's probably going to wreck the house he grew up in, the house his mother got sick in, and for a minute his gaze snaps up to look at Derek.

"Just because he's calling," Derek says, and it all gets lost in nonsensical whispers and the pound of Derek's heart, and how badly Stiles needs to make it _stop_.

The world turns into a rippling haze amidst the scent of wariness and aggression, the feel of flesh under his claws and the thud of Derek hitting the floor beneath them. He digs his hands, his fingers, into Derek's shoulders, and the smell of Derek's blood hits his nose.

For an instant, none of it makes sense.

But Derek is mad, now, or maybe has started to realize he's fighting for his life. He roars in Stiles's face, and when Stiles jerks back, rolls them over. Derek's hand presses down on his throat, no claws, just pressure, and Stiles squirms, hips writhing and head lolling as he tries to find leverage. He has to get back on top, has to get his claws into Derek somehow, so he swipes at his face and turns his head, about ready to bite the other werewolf.

And that's when the cold water hits them both. Followed immediately by more cold water.

Stiles jerks, and looks up, trying to discern in the unmuted brightness just who the hell — 

Dad.

Dad's staring at them, his face drawn into grim, hard lines. His mouth curves down, but his eyes are worried. No scent of metal or gun oil, no sign of the utility belt or his mace, just Dad in pajama pants and a Berkeley t-shirt with two empty plastic pitchers and a fast heartbeat.

God, he can hear Dad's heart. It's actually kind of beautiful, even if it's fear-fast. Even if it's just another excuse he'll come up with not to obey his alpha. He's not going to stop that sound, not ever; it's half of the reason he exists. It's the most important thing in his world, has been for eight years, and Stiles can't imagine that changing. Doesn't want to imagine that changing.

The itch, the burn, the wild strength — they all ebb right out of him. It leaves him small and as human as he gets these days, soaking on the floor, pinned by a sodden Derek.

Dad raises an eyebrow at them both. "You want to explain what the hell this was all about? And just who hit the wall over there?"

Stiles doesn't even know where to start. It's Derek who says, "The rogue still has some control over him."

All Stiles can think, all he can really say, besides that's he's sorry, is, "Seriously, Dad? Water?"

"It's how you break up dogs," Dad replies. 

Derek's eyebrows look offended. Honestly, Derek looks pretty much offended from his dripping hair to his bare feet. But the eyebrows are both mortified and surly.

Stiles smacks him before he can something stupidly obvious like 'we're not dogs.' His open palm lands against Derek's shoulder, and Derek's eyes shine blue when the other werewolf glares back down at him.

"Don't argue with it," Stiles says. "It worked. Look, I'm sorry I tried to kill you — Dad, I'm sorry I tried to kill him, and I'm sure he's sorry he backhanded me into a wall — but can you please let me up?"

Derek rolls off him easily, pulling Stiles up by the shoulder as he stands. He makes a sort of half-hearted attempt at dusting Stiles off before brushing droplets of blood and plaster off himself.

Dad, for his part, just sighs. He rubs the back of his head, uncomfortable, and mutters, "Werewolves." After a moment — in which, judging by Derek's expression, it becomes profoundly obvious that everybody is aware of exactly what Dad just mumbled — Dad says, "Go back to bed, Stiles."

Stiles picks up his blanket, puts the lamp that fell over back on the hallway table, and heads back to his room.

After about twenty minutes, a familiar heartbeat stands outside his room. Derek knocks on the door, and, when Stiles doesn't object, opens it and steps inside. He and Derek heal equally fast, so the clawmarks are gone, and Stiles sees no sign of bruises.

Derek takes a seat in Stiles's computer chair and says, "You found your anchor." Dryly, he adds, "Congratulations. Next time, you might not try to kill me."

"No promises," Stiles says, with half a grin, because that's too easy.

But Derek only nods, serious.

Stiles makes a mental note to ask about anchors later. For now, it's two in the damn morning and he wants his room to smell like his pack. He pats the bed in a clear, if still slightly damp, invitation. Asshole that he is, Derek shakes himself like a dog, spraying water all over Stiles's room, before he settles in beside him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the end notes of doom! Come find me on tumblr ([yesthatnagia](http://yesthatnagia.tumblr.com)) if you ever want to chat. Or be spammed by despairing reblogs of Tyler Hoechlin's face.
> 
> Not 1000% satisfied with this chapter (one of the things about my taking forever to post? It generally takes me about that long to craft a chapter that makes me happy with it on every level), but these things needed to happen, and they needed to happen now — and a few of them will be important later on. Possibly _much_ later on.
> 
> Congratulations, I've finally revealed Stiles's anchor. It is probably exactly what you expected it to be, and yes, it only took five chapters. Pacing, man. How does it work?
> 
> Also! As we move into openly shippy territory, I feel I'd be breaking the Writer-Reader Contract if if I didn't warn you now: there are some popular tropes I'm planning not to use. Especially pretty much anything to do with the 'mates' trope. Don't worry, I'm not about to bash (hell, I enjoy a good Kouri Arashi fic myself, despite hir use of the trope), and I'm not going to bring it up in the fic only to dismiss it. But I can _almost_ promise you that nobody in-story is going to use the word 'mate.' If you're here looking for destined soulmates, you're not going to find them — but you will find something just as worthwhile, for all the struggle they'll have to go through to get there. I hope. 
> 
> (I don't know if knotting will be a thing. Pseudo-knotting maybe. I don't know; I can make no promises either way. So fans and detractors of knotting alike, stay on your toes, I guess?)
> 
> EDIT 6/17/14 /waves hand. There was no fail about an unincorporated town having a mayor. You saw nothing. These are not the droids you're looking for. Carry on about your business.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning for VIOLENCE.

Stiles wakes a full two hours before he set his earliest alarm. Derek is still beside him, his body producing a ridiculous amount of heat that leaves Stiles sweaty, uncomfortable — and also leaves him feeling lulled and soothed. It's both intrusive and soporific. Life as a werewolf just doesn't seem to stop throwing the weird at him.

The room should look dark, but it doesn't. He can see just fine, can read each of his posters, can see every plane and angle of what's visible of Derek.

Speaking of Derek.

Stiles reaches over and shoves Derek out of bed, because holy crap can Dad not know about this. Ever. He sees the loose-limbed relaxation of sleep turn into tension the minute his hand touches Derek's skin, sees Derek's eyes fly open and flare blue as soon as Derek starts to roll. He's fully awake and aware as he goes over the edge, and hits the ground in a crouch. Derek comes up in an instant, his claws out, his fangs showing, crouched defensively.

And then he stares sleepily at Stiles.

The next words out of Stiles's mouth shock him, because never in a million years would he expect to say them. If Derek's eyebrows are any indication, he surprises them both.

"Let's go for a run."

* * *

If Stiles were still human, the pace Derek sets would careen by punishing, veer right on past masochistic, and quite possibly would come out the other side of, frankly, suicidal. As it is, he has to push himself to keep up without using the ridiculous werewolf superspeed, but the warm burn as his body protests seems to uncoil something that tensed in the night, silences the buzzing under his skin.

They both reek of sweat, scents thick and spicy and sour, by the time they get back to the house. Stiles takes the first shower, since he actually has somewhere to be, and then checks the time. Still half an hour until his first alarm will go off and he'll have to start actually getting ready. So he starts up breakfast. Nothing complicated, just some coffee, some scrambled eggs, and turkey bacon. He adds grated cheese and a dab of hot sauce to the eggs as he scrambles them.

Eventually, the scents of coffee and cooking meat must drift through the house, because both Dad and Derek make their way to the kitchen. Derek has his head tilted so his nose is in the air. Apparently he doesn't care about dog comparisons before he's had his first meal.

Stiles pours Dad a cup of coffee and then heads upstairs to get dressed and make sure he has some idea of where his homework is.

* * *

The rumors have already started to buzz around the school. Stiles's three day absence last week has anyone who cares utterly convinced that he and Erica have been dating at least that long. (Which, oh god, that's going to be news to Erica; he hopes it doesn't upset her. She's got enough bullshit on her plate.) Stiles had hoped that not many people would care; he's hardly the most popular student around, since nobody wants to invite the sheriff's kid to parties, and he's never been a sports star. He was pretty good at baseball, back in middle school and junior high, but baseball's a sport nobody at BHHS cares about, the pack of heathens.

He hoped wrong. At least a few people care, because Jackson Whittemore looks at him and sneers, Danny looks profoundly disappointed in him, and Lydia Martin gives him an evaluating stare, like she's deciding whether he exists on the same planet as her or not. Given that she dismisses him the minute he meets her eyes, Stiles guesses she picked "not."

Stiles is just leaving his second period class when he catches the conversation of a couple of girls leaning against the lockers. Their heartbeats are fluttery, excited, and they smell of plasticky lipgloss and a mess of peaches and mangoes. One of them has curly hair, and Stiles smells her hairspray almost as strong as whatever Bath & Bodyworks crap she's wearing.

"— heard he was, like, dragged into the woods by coyotes or something —" 

"Ugh, she's so gross, though. If I was him, I'd have gone jogging sooner."

Stiles flashes back to _I bet your mom got cancer just to make you shut up_ and the world goes blue-gray and blurry for a second. Some of the colors fade. Specifically, red and orange start looking weak and yellowy, while the blues and greens are stronger. It only lasts for a few seconds, but it's startling. It might be a wolf thing; Stiles thinks reflexively of his father, of his father's approval and his steady heart.

"I can't fucking believe you," he tells Hairspray Girl. "Yeah, fine, you don't like Erica. But that shit's not okay."

Before he can say anything else, someone grabs onto his shoulder. Stiles takes a deep breath and realizes it's Scott. Scott's face is pitying, when Stiles gets a good look at him. And then Scott's expression turns puzzled.

"Stiles? Why are your eyes blue?"

All Stiles can do is clap his best friend on the shoulder and say, "Later, man. I'll explain everything later."

* * *

By 'later,' Stiles means 'after frantically texting Dad and Derek that Scott must have seen his werewolf eyes.' Stiles hadn't been aware they were blue, and now kind of just wants to hide in the bathroom and shift his face to see what he looks like.

He doesn't get the chance. Erica shows up to class in the middle of third period. She's wearing black slacks and a black turtleneck, and she's pulled her hair into a surprisingly neat ponytail. It's just a shade too casual to be actual funeral wear, but she's clearly been dealing with grieving relatives from out of town. She smells of bitten nails, stale perfume, and hours of crying.

Stiles remembers the influx of Nowaks, deluging into poor, unprepared Beacon Hills and bustling around his father's house and cooking five thousand dishes with cabbage for days and days after Mom died. He wonders if the Reyeses (Reyi?) are doing the same. Maybe without the cabbage.

Erica takes the empty seat next to Stiles. He looks over at her, offers up a smile. She doesn't smile back, but some of the tension in her shoulders relaxes. 

After class, on their way to the cafeteria, her heart starts to pound, and Stiles almost automatically brushes his shoulder against her, reaching for her arm. He stops himself on the latter; there's his apparently new, wolfish, tactile habits, and then there's acting like she's actually his girlfriend.

Erica surprises him by heading for Vernon Boyd's table; Boyd watches her sit with an expression that might be unease, or might be confusion. Stiles follows, because no way in hell is he sitting near Jackson, and he's still more than a little worried about Erica.

All Stiles's carefully laid out plans go, of course, awry. Because no sooner than Stiles has opened his lunchbag and removed, admittely, some pretty ridiculous leftovers, does Scott sink down into the seat next to Stiles. Naturally, Allison plops on down next to Scott, never breaking in her conversation with Lydia, who is of course followed by Jackson and Danny.

The Official Vernon Boyd Nobody Else Allowed Table has suddenly become Vernon Boyd And The Sophomore Year Elite (And Erica). Boyd looks like he's even more confused or maybe in pain. As it is, his eyes are wary.

Scott shoots Stiles a look that says Stiles is explaining the eye thing as soon as they're alone.

Next to Stiles, Erica tenses. Her heart speeds up, and she smells of anxiety so sharp it's almost fear.

"So, Erica," Scott says, because Stiles clearly needs to trade him in for a new best friend. (Maybe Boyd should be his new best friend.) "Did Stiles talk to you about Lydia and Allison wanting to triple? We're all going bowling."

Erica gets even more tense, heart rabbit-thumping in her chest, and Boyd arches an eyebrow. "No," Erica says, very slowly. She stares at Stiles. "He didn't."

"For one, Scott, Erica and I aren't dating. For another, if we _were_ dating, I still wouldn't do that triple, because it'd mean I had to spend more than five minutes with Jackson."

"Hey, Jackson's been five percent less douchey," Danny pipes in. At Jackson's wounded look, he adds, "Sorry, man, but you're really only down about five."

Erica stares at Stiles for a moment, taking a slow bite out of her sandwich, before she tells Stiles, "Thanks, asshole. Way to make this day awesome." And yet she smells less like anxiety, less like being on the edge of a crying jag, and more like her usual self. There's a sharp edge of anger there.

Stiles is starting to get the impression that Erica is one of those 'don't get sad, get mad' types.

"Wait, were we dating?" Stiles stares at her. Did she think they were? He's like almost totally sure he'd have had to spend more time with her in order for them to be dating. And also probably spend more money, because isn't he supposed to pay for stuff? Also, he's pretty sure that if they'd been dating, she'd have at least kissed his cheek. "I didn't think you wanted to date me!"

Erica gives him a look like he's something she peeled out of the dog crap on the bottom of her shoe. (Jackson starts to laugh. Possibly because Stiles hates Jackson, it sounds like dumb horseface braying to him, and he kind of just wants to remove Jackson's spleen. Stiles thinks about what Dad is probably doing at work.)

He points to Erica. "See, look. That face you're making. I had no idea we were —"

"You had no idea because you wanted to bury your face in Derek's —"

"No, no, there is definitely no burying any of my anything in anything of Derek's, thank you, Erica, can we please stop talking about —" 

Boyd is staring at him. His eyes are wide, and his mouth has stopped its stoic, downward curve. His lips are a straight line, but Stiles can see a glimmer of startled, begrudging amusement. Erica, on the other hand, is clearly judging the hell out of Stiles. 

Scott elbows him in the ribs, while Allison and Lydia both eye Erica without really stopping their conversation. "How did you not know you were dating, man?"

"Dude! I sat next to her in class, like, once and then skipped school with her!"

Scott and Danny both give him judgmental looks. Lydia rolls her eyes skyward, like she can't believe this is her life. Allison says, "Hey, Erica, want to go shopping after school?"

Erica blinks for a long moment before she tells them, "I'm not sure I can. I mean, the funeral is tomorrow, and my mom..."

"All the more reason," Lydia says, surprisingly gently, considering her usual switches between shallow stupidity and fierce, no-nonsense intelligence, "to go shopping. We'll find you something nice to wear to the funeral."

"I'll ask my Mom," Erica says.

Allison, at least, nods excitedly, while Lydia gives Erica a critical once-over. Whatever Lydia's decision, she keeps it to herself, at least. Again, considering this is Lydia, that's surprisingly nice. Maybe not all teenagers are heartless.

While Scott ribs Stiles about the fact that spending an entire day together is hanging out plenty, and Danny point-blank asks if the guy Erica mentioned is Derek Hale, the one he met over Skype, Erica leans toward Boyd. Boyd leans into her, his eyebrows hitched in a 'this better be good' kind of face.

"I actually sat with you," Erica says, "because I thought it'd be quiet. _Because that's the done thing now, isn't it?_ " That last, she directs toward Stiles.

Boyd starts to laugh.

Stiles is pretty sure he's just been dumped. He didn't even know they were dating, and now they're not dating anymore. Wow, he's bad at this. When he admits as much out loud, probably a little too loudly, Boyd just laughs harder.

Danny says, "You were cheating on her with that Derek guy. Treat him right, by the way, or I'll snap him up."

Stiles is _so grateful_ when the bell rings. But hey, at least Boyd looks like he's having a good time. He and Erica walk out of the cafeteria together, and Erica looks less miserable.

* * *

Chemistry is almost godawful, but Stiles sits with Erica again. She makes a decent lab partner. She's more conscientious than Stiles is, more careful. If Stiles had sat with Scott, they'd have wound up goofing off, or Stiles wouldn't have paid as close attention as he should have, and god knows Scott wouldn't be able to rein him in.

Harris is, as always, pretty much a complete and total dick. Film at eleven. Although, actually, if Stiles bothered to tape even half the shit Harris says to him… It's not like high school teachers get tenure, right?

That's a thought to save for another day. A day when he really, really needs warm and fuzzy thoughts.

As it is, Stiles hangs around outside the classroom after the bell rings. He shoves a piece of paper with his number scrawled on it at Erica and says, "That's my cell. Use it whenever you want."

"We're not dating," Erica reminds him.

Stiles grins. "Oh, good, glad we cleared that up. Listen, I _get_ what it's like, okay? I'm not gonna think you're weak just because you want to talk about your dad. Or because you wanna talk about anything but your dad. I was a mess. I am, like, the last person who will ever judge you."

Erica takes the paper with a wary look.

Scott tries to sneak up on him. Well, maybe not really, but Scott doesn't announce himself before he's standing behind Stiles saying, "You're going to drive me home, right?"

Then again, Scott doesn't have to announce himself anymore. Not that he knows it. Stiles just turns and looks at Scott for a moment. "Sure. Actually, you wanna swing by my place so I can, uh, explain the thing?"

Scott looks at him for a second before he says, "Yeah, sure."

* * *

Stiles checks his phone before he starts the engine. The text from his dad is _Somehow I knew you would have to tell Scott._ Derek just says _Be your own example_. Ha ha. Such a comedian, that Derek. But hey, apparently Dad knows him all too well.

They don't talk in the Jeep. That's mostly because it's basically impossible to talk over the engine's roar. Stiles could probably hear Scott, but he'd have to shout right in Scott's ear to be heard.

All the while, Stiles tries to figure out how Scott will react. He's pretty sure he knows, because Scott's been his best friend for like eight years, and has lived in Beacon Hills full-time since the summer before eighth grade. Scott'll be cool about it. They've known each other forever; Scott's not about to start screaming 'monster' and 'unnatural at him.' Hell, Scott'll probably think it's cool. Maybe he'll start carrying bacon around in his pocket, or, like, buy that bacon aftershave off ThinkGeek.

His hands clench so hard on the steering wheel that he hears aluminum creak. Scott doesn't seem to notice.

Stiles makes it through the drive by thinking about what Dad said, about Dad's heartbeat, about the fact that he threw water to stop werewolves in, basically, a dog fight.

The cruiser's in the drive. Stiles breathes a sigh of relief at the thought that his dad will be nearby. Intellectually, he knows that Dad is not actually capable of fixing everything — he's lived with the proof of that for eight years — but the thought of having him around makes him feel better anyway. At the very least, Dad can make sure things don't get too out of hand. 

The minute he parks the car in the drive, puts it in neutral and pulls on the parking brake, he slings the door open and makes for the house.

Dad's in the front hall. Stiles can hear a second heartbeat in the back of the house, toward the kitchen. Stiles takes in a deep breath, pulls in the scent of earth and grass and musk. Derek's in or near the kitchen.

"Come on," Stiles says, "it's easier if I just show you."

He doesn't _quite_ drag Scott up the stairs to his bathroom, but it's close.

God, his bathroom still smells like his morning jerkoff session. Something's off about it, though, but hey, at least Scott can't smell it. Stiles flicks on the light, points at the mirror, and thinks about eating Bambi's Mom, about Hairspray Girl saying awful shit about someone whose dad just died, thinks about that asshole Chris Argent fucking shooting him, about Derek pushing him around. The shift ripples over him, fast and pounding.

Huh. His face looks seriously, seriously different. For one, his eyebrows are gone. Vanished. Poof. The brow ridge is more pronounced, though, like some cosmic God Of Faces has taken pity on him and tried to make up for _vanishing eyebrows_. The bridge of his nose is broader, he's sprouted some serious Burnsides mutton chops, and when he peels his lips back — his lips feel more mobile, what the hell — he has huge fangs. They're not even, like, pretty vampire fangs; he looks like a really stupid saber-toothed tiger, or like Princess Monster Truck. 

And his eyes are blue. Like, really blue. And glowing. How about that?

Next to him, Scott's heartbeat speeds up. So does his breathing. He pulls in a lot of really quick, shallow breaths. He's probably not getting enough oxygen.

"Scott," Stiles says. "Scotty. It's okay. I'm not going to, like, hurt you or anything."

Scott just points at his teeth in the mirror, slaps one hand to his own chest and tries manfully to force his throat open, to get air into his lungs. But Scott starts to wheeze, and his lungs sound _awful_. Stiles can tell it's a losing battle, so he digs in Scott's pocket for his inhaler. Once he has it, he uncaps it and holds it to Scott's mouth.

Stiles says, "Breathe," and squeezes the inhaler.

After about thirty seconds, Scott stops wheezing. Once he can actually suck in decent lungfuls of air, he yelps, "What the _hell_ , Stiles?"

"So, uh, werewolves are a thing." Stiles lifts his hands, for the first time really _looking_ at the claws his fingernails have become. "And I am one, now. Remember when I said I was bitten by a big dog? Actually not a dog."

"Holy shit!" Scott stares at him, then reaches out to poke his face. "Where'd your eyebrows go, man?"

"I don't know," Stiles says. "But, hey, eyebrows for superstrength and super senses. I'll take it, I guess."

"You mean there's not a way to change you back? Make you human again? Kill the werewolf who bit you with a silver bullet or something?"

Stiles stares blankly at Scott. The bathroom smells faintly of grass-earth-musk-wild in addition to jizz, and Scott smells like anxiety. His heartbeat is squirrel-fast. And he realizes, with the faint, bleak distance that makes him wonder if he's gone freaking crazy, that it never occurred to him. To ask if he could be normal again. What, is he used to his shit just getting fucked up and there being no way to go back?

And then it's like he's hearing wind roar in his ears, like his stupid rogue alpha is whispering with his mouth at the shell of his ear. Stiles has to close his eyes and listen for Dad's heartbeat, for how steady it is, for his every indrawn breath.

"I never thought about going back," Stiles says. "And I —" Okay, yeah, the temper is inconvenient. He's not thrilled about the hunters. The effect on his ADHD is super inconvenient. But the senses, when they're not driving him crazy? The strength? The _healing_? This weird, comfortable friendship thing with Derek?

He'd accepted that this was going to be his life.

Scott's face falls. "You don't wanna go back? I mean, man, you're not even using it. You quit lacrosse!"

"I could hurt people! What if I hurt the other team, or you during practice?"

"Which is why you should try to be human again!"

"Scott, that sounds like a pipe dream. Something like this, when it shakes up your life doesn't _unshake_. Big life changes don't just unchange!" 

Scott just stares at him. Stiles takes a deep breath in, but his best bro smells like disappointment and a little anxiety, not fear. Stiles looks back to the mirror, wonders once again where the hell his eyebrows went, and then closes his eyes and focuses on Dad.

As the heartbeat grows stronger in his ears, the change ripples backward. It feels kind of like wriggling out of really skinny jeans, but when he opens his eyes, he's normal again.

"Whatever. Come on," Stiles says, clapping Scott on the back and being grateful when Scott doesn't flinch. "Let's go play some TF2."

* * *

Later, when Stiles has driven Scott home, Dad gets out the case files and the whiskey. Stiles can't help the knot of worry in his stomach when his father starts pouring his second tumbler. Better coping methods; they've _got_ to find better coping methods.

Derek seems to sense his distress. He rests a big, heavy palm on the back of Stiles's neck. 

Stiles takes a deep breath. Takes in Derek's grassy wild animal scent, his father's own mixture of musk-sandalwood-gun oil, the slowness of Derek's heart. And then he sits down across from Dad, while Derek lurks in a far corner, apparently trying to be invisible.

"What's the bad news?"

"Lab can't identify the animal hair found on Orfeo Reyes," Dad grunts. "They think it might be some kind of canine. And some of the best claw marks we have? Too _big_ , too wide of a spread, to match any known animal."

Derek stirs and says, "Stiles's alpha."

"Considering I've never heard of a wolf or a coyote with paws the size of a grown man's hand? I'm thinking yes. But what the hell was Orfeo Reyes doing in the Preserve? He lived down in the foothills."

Stiles leans over to look at the files as he asks, "Did he go there to jog?"

"No, he was in dress shoes and a suit." Dad sighs. "I've got the department looking into his history as an insurance agent. Just because _I_ can't think of a reason to rip a man to shreds over his insurance business doesn't mean there isn't one."

In the corner, Derek's heart starts to beat fast.

"I'm probably not going to be able to tie all this in with the animal mutilation, am I?" Dad sighs into his whiskey.

Derek raises his eyebrows and points almost furiously at the files on the table. Okay, apparently, animal mutilations are a thing for werewolves. Stiles wonders if Dad's talking "what Stiles did to Bambi's Mom" or something more sinister.

* * *

Stiles doesn't end up going to bed until eleven. Dad's a little wobbly when he finally stands up from the table. Stiles clears it, packs all the glossy photos and xeroxed documents away in the manila folder, save one photo of a carved up deer, and keeps an ear on Dad's progress through the house. He wishes he could shut his ears when he hears the bathroom door close, but Dad's merciful and turns on a tap.

A heartbeat approaches behind him, stops in the doorway between kitchen and dining room.

"Have the police looked through Reyes's phone?" Derek asks.

"They've got his phone records. No unusual calls. His wife's supposed to bring all the paper correspondence from home down to the station, but that probably won't happen until after the funeral, and it could mess with settling his estate."

"What about his email?"

Stiles tries to imagine an angry werewolf sending equally angry emails. He ends up picturing a wolf with really heavy eyebrows hunt-and-pecking at a keyboard in the public library. Derek glowers as he laughs.

"Sorry, man. Just… got the best, worst image in my head. Little claws poking at a keyboard. Oh god."

Derek rolls his eyes. "See if you can get into the mail. If he wasn't random, he was lured."

That's not a chilling thought at all.

* * *

The air is cold. His breath turns it foggy, and the moisture in the air carries scents farther and more vivid than usual for a winter night. He looks up, briefly, watches as the streetlights wink off the security cameras and lose their light in the open mouth of stars above him.

If he listens — not even closely — he hears the steady pulse, slow enough to be calm, but fast enough to be unhealthy, of his prey's heart. He can smell the chalk of Tums from the other side of the fence, the sour of old beer. Medicine. Medicine is such a familiar smell.

Something inside him quails at stalking human prey.

 _Hush_ , he tells it. _Watch._ The young must learn.

He uses his fingers to unlatch the gate, latches it back silently. He summons the memory of anger, the way it burned at his throat, choking him until he wept. Summons the ashes of a life that is not his, that has been abandoned.

He opens the bus's emergency exit from the outside, using his claws to ease the way.

His prey turns, wondering. 

A swift, simple leap into the bus.

His prey turns back to run.

Easy, to dart forward and sever the achilles tendon. As the prey bellows, impotent and pained, he rakes his claws up, hamstringing. He rolls the man over and begins to tear into stomach and throat, rending fabric and flesh, chipping bone, with his claws.

The face is wrong. (Is the face wrong?)

Sheriff Stilinski. He did them no harm. (He did them no good, either.)

No, the face is not wrong. Simply not the intended. But yes, this is a name to add to his list. Not for direct involvement, but for his closed eyes — wide open, now, a striking blue-green to a wolf's eyes, despite the dim light — and his failure to _see_.

* * *

Stiles comes to on the floor outside his father's room, with Derek staring at him intently. Derek's eyes burn blue.

And Stiles isn't sure if he was dreaming or not.

"Where's my dad?" He asks, hoarse.

Derek's stare intensifies. His eyebrows want to know what the hell is wrong with Stiles. "Not here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO YEAH THINGS ARE REALLY STARTING TO DIVERGE NOW. I'D SAY I'M SORRY, BUT I'M NOT.
> 
> Also I'm committed to writing a total of 25k words for two different big bangs. On the one hand: I finally get to write that Havemercy crossover. On the other: whoops, "bad wolves" might be even further delayed.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> La la la, my divergences are diverging further! It may have become obvious that I'm not moving in a timeline strictly analogous to the show. I'd apologize, but I think it works for this story.
> 
> Also, _legal consequences_ , because the show really should have showed some of those off.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING for HUMAN and ANIMAL MUTILATION.

Stiles heads straight to his bedroom. Thanks to the weak golden glow of the streetlights he can see through his blinds, he doesn't even need to turn on a light. Instead, he grabs his phone off his bedside table. It blares almost bright enough to blind him as he swipes it awake. The clock reads _04:15_ , but he pays the time little mind as he pulls up the call option and dials his dad.

The phone rings through to voicemail.

Stiles calls again, hyper aware of how fast his heart is beating, of Derek's quiet approach through the halls.

Voicemail. His father's calm voice, assuring him that he's reached the number of Sheriff Wieńczysław Stilinski, and that if he leaves a message, the Sheriff will get back to him ASAP.

Stiles doesn't leave a message. Stiles calls dispatch.

"Stiles?" That's Tara's voice, a little tired, a little exasperated. "You know you're not supposed to dial this line."

He doesn't bother with pleasantries or excuses. Tara, of all people, knows why he needs to know when he demands, hoarse, "Where's Dad?"

A careful, measured pause. "He's at a scene, Stiles."

"Where _is_ he?" He can't help the faint growl as he asks, tries to stay calm, to imagine his father's heartbeat, but his fangs drop and his claws push out regardless, because Stiles won't believe he's okay until he sees his face, hears his voice, smells that he's unhurt.

A pause, a sigh. "He's at your school. I can't tell you anything else. We both know I shouldn't have told you that much, Stiles."

And they both know exactly why she did: she was a deputy eight years ago. She remembers deputies dropping Stiles off at the hospital, remembers a small, skinny kid tucked into corners of the breakroom trying not to cry. Remembers the Sheriff's son having panic attacks when he didn't know, with complete certainty, where his father was, that he was safe.

"Thanks, Tara," he says, lisping around his fangs.

"Let's go," Derek says from the doorway. He's got his jacket on, its sleeves just slightly too long, covering down to his hands.

* * *

Turns out that when he has a mind to, Derek drives like a maniac. Stiles is frankly more than a little surprised at how smoothly the Camaro takes turns at speeds he couldn't handle in the Jeep. Frankly, Stiles is pretty sure even Deputy Demetrios doesn't drive like this, and everyone in the department knows how she treats her cruiser.

They reach BHHS ridiculously quickly, even given the lack of traffic and the town's usual four AM green light streak.

Stiles is out of the Camaro even before Derek puts it into park. He tilts his head back, lets his mouth fall open as he tries to take in every scent on the air. Wet, dead leaves. Frost. Oil-gasoline-smoke. Small, furry things. Human skin, sweat. Blood. Gunpowder, metal, greasy food.

Derek bars him with an arm, practically clotheslining him. "Listen, too."

Voices. The squawk of radios. Footsteps, jangling keys, the soft thud of holsters against duty belts, inaudible to regular people.

Stiles follows the scent of blood and guns, the sound of voices. As he approaches, he starts picking his father's heartbeat out over the crowd, the scent of his father's aftershave. Something's tainting the smell of his father's sweat; instead of calm, of wry amusment and the grief he wakes with, he smells of exhaustion, anxiety, stress.

Dad's standing outside a school bus. The same one Stiles dreamed about: its Kraft cheddar color washed out in the milk-mild moonlight and the hazy glow of the streetlights, painted almost blue by the white beam of the standing lamps brought by the department. If he turns his head to look, he can see blood, tacky and dark brown, splashing the bus's interior.

It's the most absurd, surreal rush of relief Stiles has ever felt; he dreamed his father dead inside that bus, but here he is, exuding authority and calm despite whatever the hell happened to drag him out of his house at god-knows-when and had him summoning six of his deputies.

" _Dad_ ," Stiles says, his voice cracked and shaking a little.

Dad's head jerks, but he turns around slowly. He looks at Stiles, gaze sweeping up and down, and Stiles realizes he left the house in a tee-shirt and plaid pajama pants. Oh boy.

"Stiles? What are you doing here? When did you get here?" Dad starts forward, his heart speeding up.

"Was it —"

"Looks like an animal did it," Dad says. "How it got onto the bus, we're still not sure."

"Mutant freak coyotes, maybe," Stiles points out. "A really smart mountain lion."

"I'll take that under advisement," Dad tells him with a wry curve of his mouth. Sternly, he adds, "You can't be here."

"I know — I just — you were gone. I needed to know you were okay."

Above the blood-meat-shit smell of the dead body, he smells fur, a weird blend of wet dog and human skin, something dry and medicinal, something like ash or char, and something else he can't identify but unsettles him. There's a faint layer of anxiety overlaying that, fear-sweat, stress; it probably didn't belong to the alpha.

He can see the canny flick of Dad's eyes back to the bus and then up to the low, thinning moon. He can see the question forming in Dad's head, the links coming together. Dad takes those last few steps toward Stiles and rests his palm against the back of Stiles's neck. Everything in Stiles goes limp for an instant; there's a rushing urge to apologize, to promise he'll be good, just please don't be mad at him — 

Freaking werewolf instincts, man. Stiles locks his knees and lets Dad half drag him, giving himself a mental shake. He half wonders if Derek's parents ever did that to him. Given the way it apparently causes _instant contrition and obedience_ , they probably did. Or maybe they knew they had to control their kids' human sides, too, and used it sparingly.

"Gonna walk this sneaky little miscreant back to his car," Dad says in general to the deputies. "Hopefully _before_ he pukes on my crime scene."

They make it out the gate and around the corner, out of sight, with only a few knowing smirks cast Stiles's direction. Stiles maintains that the last time he puked at a crime scene is really not that big a deal. For one, who's prepared for the smell of a half-decayed deer with its intestines cut? For another, there's _always_ a puker. It's on every cop show; it can't be that surprising.

"I take it your alpha told you this was happening somehow?"

"Sort of," Stiles says. "I — I know how he did it. He showed me that while I was asleep. But I thought — I — that guy was _you_. He hates your eyes. He thinks they were closed? It was all this… blur of what he was doing, and remembering some kind of fire, and then the guy was you."

Dad looks over at Derek. "Have you heard of this happening?"

"He _made_ Stiles," Derek says. "There's going to be a link. Until Stiles accepts a new alpha, this rogue will be able to tap into him when he's asleep."

"Tap into him." Dad's tone is flat. "Like when Stiles tried to kill you?"

"Like that. Or like this: trying to share a kill."

Dad nods, brow furrowing. He's drawing conclusions in his head, figuring something out. But all he says is, "Stiles, you dreamed about him hating my eyes. No mention of hating anybody's mouth?"

"Uh, no. Why?"

"Oh, no reason," Dad says, too breezy to be anything but dismissing this for later. "Go home and get some rest."

* * *

One of the deputies talks to a teacher, who's overheard talking to another teacher on the way to the break room. Turns out the guy in the bus was Eddie Greenwood, bus driver. Stiles remembers Dad bringing home cardboard boxes full of case files and spending practically a whole month on the phone, getting mail from other departments. Firemen even came to the house to give statements once or twice.

All that was just three years ago. It had taken Dad six months of careful groundwork, and then he'd fired Greenwood from his position as arson investigator. Fired for incompetence, it turned out, since there'd been no indication Greenwood took bribes.

Stiles remembers Greenwood being a pretty nice guy. He certainly can't really imagine why an angry alpha would carve into the flesh around his mouth, would tear his tongue out and rip it to pieces and score his lips with clawmarks.

Unfortunately, people stop talking to him when Stiles stops the latest gossiper in the hall and demands, "Post-mortem?" 

The boy he'd stopped just stares at him like he's crazy.

So Stiles says, "Did it happen before or after he died?"

The boy shrugs. "Hell if I know, dude. Nobody told me that crap. What are you, CSI?"

And then the kid goes on his way, and Stiles makes a valiant effort at tearing his hair out. Given the buzzcut, he basically just runs his hands over his head-fuzz and rolls his eyes a lot.

* * *

Stiles keeps an ear on Scott's heartbeat throughout the day. He and Allison seem to be having some sort of fight, or maybe Scott's afraid of her parents. There's something about a woman named Kate? Either way, Allison keeps whispering that she's sorry, and Scott keeps trying to either accept her apology or reassure her. Stiles isn't sure, and since Erica is at her dad's funeral, he makes sure to keep close to Boyd — who's much quieter than the rest of the people Stiles could conceivably hang out with — and Isaac Lahey, who has turned "quiet" into an artform.

It's actually kind of ridiculous, how difficult to notice Isaac can be, considering he's on the lacrosse team and he's got some sort of cherub face. Stiles is pretty sure that all Lahey needs is a moderately realistic English accent, and he'd have to mace people to get them to stop asking him out. But evidently Isaac doesn't want that kind of attention. Every time Stiles goes anywhere near him, Isaac's heart thumps like a rabbit beneath his ribcage, and if Stiles looks at him for more than two seconds, Isaac smells of very sharp fear.

What the hell?

"Jesus, dude," Stiles mutters under his breath in Euro. "I'm not going to murder you in your sleep or something. Chill the hell out."

Isaac just shoots him a terrified glance and scoots slightly away, hunching down in his desk and keeping his eyes on his notebook.

Whatever. There's obviously nothing Stiles can do about this, except leave Isaac alone. 

At lunch, Stiles sits with Boyd again, and again, Scott and the rest join them. Boyd looks warily at them still, like they're all about to pull some sort of dick move and then yell, "Punked."

Having Scott, Allison, Lydia, Danny, and Boyd around makes Jackson's douchebaggery easier to deal with. And then, midway through lunch, Erica shows up. She'd dressed nicely — Stiles is guessing she did go shopping with Lydia and Allison yesterday — but her face is pale, tired. She smells of saltwater and the outdoors, anxiety scents clashing with over-perfumed flowers and cut grass. 

She gravitates toward what might be becoming the Sophomore Elite table, sits down across from Boyd again. Her heart rate is all over the place.

"How'd it go?" Stiles asks.

Erica says, "It was fine."

Her heartbeat doesn't speed up. Which is about all he can say for it. Not that she's probably really even lying — Stiles remembers Dad running basically on autopilot during the funeral, and as long as nobody trips over the casket or punches whoever gives the eulogy, it's pretty hard for a funeral to go in any direction other than _fucked up but moving along_. He himself had been too young to grasp the full enormity. He'd understood, intellectually, that his mother wasn't going to wake up; the emotional reality of the situation took about a week to hit home. Once it hit, he'd had a complete meltdown, but the intervening few days had felt unreal, like any minute he was going to wake up and Mom wouldn't even be in the hospital.

"It kind of feels like a dream, doesn't it?"

"More like a nightmare," Erica snaps, and Stiles remembers: she's a _don't get sad, get mad_ type.

* * *

Erica's utter refusal to be anything remotely identifiable as 'sad' would have been smacked, hard, by economics. (Or maybe not. She'd have probably powered through it.) Stiles is really, really, _really_ glad they don't share the class; as it is, both Boyd and Danny start eyeballing Finstock when he starts class by saying, "So I hear condolences are due today."

"Erica's not in this class," _Jackson_ , of all people, points out. Evidently today is his alternating Tuesday for not being a complete self-absorbed douchebag.

Finstock stares blankly at them all, before he says, "No, I was talking about Greenberg. His father was found this morning. I'm surprised you're here in class today, Greenberg. Surprised and proud."

Nobody bothers looking to where they're pretty sure Greenberg is supposed to sit.

After a full minute to think, Finstock says, "No, never mind, I'm not proud. You should be with your family today, Greenberg. You can't even skip school right. Jesus."

Stiles just rests his head in his hand, covering one eye with his palm. Is this more or less crazy than the _Independence Day_ speech crap? He can't tell.

Somebody toward the far right of the classroom asks, "Are you talking about Mr. Greenwood? The bus driver?" 

"Green _wood!_ " Finstock says in a rush. "Not Greenberg. So not _your_ father that got torn apart by coyotes on school grounds. Carry on, Greenberg."

* * *

Dad's been home at least an hour by the time Stiles walks in the door. He can tell from the way his father's scent is ingrained in the house — not cooled, historical, but warm and alive, breathing, and the smell of paper and ink and whiskey.

Stiles follows the heartbeat to the dining room, sees his father with two boxes of files on the table, out of uniform and wearing his reading glasses. He's running one finger down one piece of paper and another finger down a second, clearly comparing.

"Reyes and Greenwood?" Stiles asks.

"Huh? Yeah," Dad says, then taps one finger trimphantly and writes something down in a notebook. He looks up at Stiles, but the lenses must make things look blurry, because his eyes are unfocused until he pushes the glasses down on his nose. "You in for the night?"

"I think so. Unless Derek wants to drag me out for a run or something." Stiles tries to angle for a look at Dad's notebook, but Dad just turns it over and wryly arches a brow. So Stiles asks: "Have you eaten yet? Another breakfast for dinner tonight, or do I have a shot persuading you to eat a salad?"

"Not a chance in hell," Dad says. "Tara brought me a salad for lunch today."

Stiles suspects most of the department avoided meat today, but bless Tara's perfect, wonderful heart regardless. He makes a mental note to shoot her a thank you text, or maybe try and convince this year's seniors not to egg Harris's house. It's not like he doesn't richly deserve it, but Tara and Eileen live just four doors down, and Harris always lodges a complaint about how two deputies can live on the same block as him and not keep his house from getting egged every year.

"Then how about pizza?" Stiles offers.

Dad flashes a tired smile.

"So come on, you're looking for links between Reyes and Greenwood, right? Have you found one?"

Dad sighs, looking up at the ceiling for a second, then says, "Found three, kiddo. The Brzezicki barn fire, the Tate fire, and the Hale fire."

That gets Stiles's attention. He jerks to look at Dad, glancing up and away from his phone and the Pizza World app, where he'd been busily throwing mushrooms, black olives, and spinach onto a double cheese. "Didn't people die in those fires?"

"Gradually increased casualties," Dad says. "What's more important is that they were all ruled accidental by Greenwood, and then Reyes went on to find the households at fault, denying their home insurance claims."

Including the Hales.

"Wait," Stiles says, even as the Camaro rumbles into the driveway. "Wasn't there a third survivor in the Hale fire?"

The front door slams closed. 

Stiles looks toward the front hall, feeling vaguely guilty. Dad notices his attention and turns to look as well.

Derek's face, when he's finally visible, is thunderously angry. His heartbeat races and skips, thudding over itself in an announcement of his mood even louder than his face. Stiles feels his hands twitch, new wolf instincts telling him he should comfort his packmate, but what little sense of self-preservation Stiles ever had is shrieking not to touch a furious werewolf.

Stiles wrinkles his nose. "Jeez, Derek, who have you been rolling in?"

Derek looks blank for a minute, before his face turns grim, and the unfamiliar scents that rise from him all blur underneath his anger.

"Chris Argent," he says, each word dropping heavy from his mouth like he hates even saying the name.

Dad just watches Derek for a minute, then looks to Stiles. He seems to be trying to get a read on Derek not just through his expression — which is obvious — but through how Stiles is reacting to him. Stilinskis really do make a habit of being too smart for their own good.

After a solid half minute of quiet, Dad just looks up from his files, glasses still pushed down his nose, and says, "Derek? You wanna tell me what Argent's done?"

Dad's voice is calm, rational, a little wry. There's a note of authority in his tone, just a faint one. Still, if Stiles has figured out anything about werewolf psych and how it differs from humans, it's kind of a dirty trick to play on your son's packmate. Not that Dad has ever been fair when it comes to his family.

"He thought he could intimidate me," Derek says.

Dad raises his eyebrows, but all he says is, "He know about you?" At Derek's brief twitch of a nod, Dad says, "Wouldn't think a werewolf intimidates easy. He lay hands on you?"

Derek looks away. Chris didn't actually touch _Derek_ , then, but Derek's pissed enough that it had to have been something serious.

"He do it somewhere public?"

"Gas station," Derek tells him.

Dad just nods and says, "Uh-huh. Which one, Derek? Give me something to work with, here."

"What can _you_ do?"

"I've been county sheriff for eight years, made plenty of connections in the court system. It happens I can do quite a lot to people who break the law." Dad's voice sounds wry, amused. "I don't go in for abusing my position, but I get the feeling werewolves and werewolf-adjacent people have been ignoring the legal system entirely." 

Derek crosses his arms over his chest.

"Gas station over on Rigby," he says, after a moment that stretches.

"Uh-huh," Dad says. "When?"

"Half hour ago," Derek says, and it's clear to Stiles that he doesn't really understand what Dad is getting at.

But Dad just nods and gets out his cell phone. He dials a number, and says, "Angie? Yeah, it's Stilinski. You in the office now? Fantastic." A pause, and then Dad says, "Do you mind looking back at your security tapes for the past couple of hours? I've got a grumpy witness here."

A very, very long pause.

And then Dad says, "Shit. The new guy in town? Thanks, Angie. I'll be needing a copy of that tape. Yeah, thank you. No, nothing else. I'll let you get back to it." After that, Dad looks up at Derek. "Let's see the car, son."

Someone's busted out the windows on the passenger side — both the window on the actual door and the side-panel near the back seat. Glass shards litter the interior, glinting like ice chips in the beam of Dad's Mag-Lite, spangled like stars on the black leather. Stiles makes a mental note not to try to sit in the car until Derek has it detailed. And he'd better be having it detailed on Chris Argent's money, because holy hell, does the man have to pay for hurting such a gorgeous car.

Dad just sweeps the flashlight over the car and then turns to Derek. "This is a criminal offense in the state of California. Say the word, and I'll have a couple deputies out here to take your statement."

He says the words _criminal offense_ with the kind of grim satisfaction of a man about to nail another dude to a wall by his arm.

Derek gives Dad a supicious look. "Why is this so important to you?"

"For one," Dad tells him, "I'm not about to have vigilantism and witch hunts in my county if I can help it, and showing this man that there are legal consequences for his actions will help me make that point." A pause, and Dad adds, with a dark promise in his voice, "He pinned my son to a tree with a crossbow bolt, Derek. He's lucky I haven't nailed his balls to the Welcome To Beacon Hills sign."

* * *

Dad calls dispatch, who sends down Carmichael, an older deputy. Stiles remembers Mom and Dad sitting together before the diagnosis, before the chemo, and talking about who might run to replace Sheriff Stevens. Carmichael had made the list, but he hadn't been interested; just like Dad, he's got the canny eyes of an old sergeant, and just like Dad, he's been a fixture around the department about as long as anyone can remember.

Unlike Dad, Deputy Carmichael spends a lot less time looking exhausted. Probably because he's not the sheriff.

Carmichael looks at the Camaro and whistles, shaking his head.

"Shit, son," he says, and Derek stiffens. "You the owner?"

"My sister, actually," Derek tells him, each word pained, like he has to scrape it from the dregs of his throat. At Carmichael's quick look, he adds, "I'm on the insurance as one of its drivers. We shared."

"Address on his DL is Brooklyn," Dad says, like that explains anything. Stiles reconsiders the legendary traffic and space issues in New York, and figures it probably does.

Carmichael nods. "And where did you say this happened?"

Derek hadn't yet, but he says, "Gas station on Rigby. About an hour ago."

"And you're sure it was intentional?" Stiles is pretty sure it's a dumb question; there's nothing else in the car, and any collision that would have broken all that glass would have left dents in the car's body, but Carmichael probably has to ask.

"Chris Argent handed one of his friends," Derek bites down on the word, distasteful, "the squeegee that he used to bust the windows. How is that accidental?"

"Easy, son," Carmichael says, and Derek tenses even more.

There's paperwork, though Carmichael handles a lot of that on a clipboard, and a lot more questions. Either Derek isn't so sure about this whole law idea, or he just hates talking more than absolutely necessary, because both Dad and Carmichael practically have to reach down his throat and drag their answers out.

At some point, Stiles stops registering the conversation and becomes more aware of heartbeats, of the warm rush of blood through veins that need to be opened. He feels dizzy, lightheaded, clumsy, and clings to the sound of his father's heartbeat, his low, dry voice.

Even after the deputy is gone, Stiles feels weird. Something's pulling at him, calling him. It hits him in waves, washing over him only to ebb and leave him himself again. In one of those lucid moments, he picks up something he smelled at the bus: fur, ash, that unsettling thing he can't name.

"He's here," Stiles says, fangs thick in his mouth and voice low.

"Where?" Dad asks, and Stiles wishes he had his gun, little though it'd probably do to the alpha. Maybe if Dad could put enough bullets in its brain.

"Back of the house," Stiles says. "Near the woods."

But by the time Dad manages to drag Stiles there, going around the side yard rather than through the house, his alpha is gone. All that remains is his strange, inhuman scent, heavy on the air, and the crisp tang of blood. Derek follows. Stiles hears his heartbeat go crazy as he stares the glistening brown smear, spiralling along the lawn, pointing directly at his home.

"Vendetta," Derek says.

The blood spiral points directly at back door — where a severed deer's head waits, its eyes torn out and tongue lolling.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently this is a Lower Deck Episode. I'd apologize, but who didn't want to spend two thousand words in Chris Argent's head, and nearly a thousand in the Sheriff's?
> 
> As always, ten thousand thanks to innocentsmith, without whom this chapter would be clunkier and less clear and with suckier Argents, to Cheloya, without whom this chapter might have been different indeed, and to Leviathanmirror, without whom this story likely would not exist.
> 
> ETA: Oh my god Eeames made me a thing! [Go look at it; it's gorgeous!](http://eeames.tumblr.com/post/92300563297/cast-our-fevers-in-stone-by-nagia-no-no)

Chris and Victoria are in the kitchen — Chris is carefully beating a custard, idly wondering if he'll actually manage to serve this at the table, or if Allison will end up scarfing it down out of a pudding cup in the car — when the doorbell rings. He looks up, hears Allison's tread as she goes for the door, and expects her to come in dragging her red-headed friend, or maybe the lopsided, floppy-haired teen who's friends with a werewolf and follows after his daughter like a puppy. Chris and Victoria look to each other. His smile's just a tick in his cheek; she ignores it in favor of looking coldly past him to the door.

But Allison darts in alone. He can't help but notice the line of her run, still so perfectly trained, the way she automatically stops in the doorway to check exits and make sure everyone's where she expects.

Dangerous habits for an Argent not to have, he knows, but ones that could draw attention from the wrong people, if they have the right background. Here's to hoping none of the teachers in Beacon Hills will see it; he's not looking forward to another discussion with another guidance counselor about what the school system can do to accommodate the PTSD he and Victoria have both worked hard to make sure she doesn't have.

Victoria, as she always does when she's interrupted, carefully sets the knife down, hilt in easy reach but blade not threatening. She looks up at their daughter, and the chilly, hardened survivor that she'd allowed Chris to see vanishes beneath her love for their daughter.

"Allison?" Victoria asks, just a touch warmer than her usual reserve.

"It's Stiles," Allison says, sounding a little confused. "He says he wants to see Dad."

"Stiles?"

"Stiles… I don't remember his last name. Something Polish, maybe. He's Scott's really weird friend," she says, as if that explains everything. She has no idea how _much_ it explains — and just how many other questions it raises. 

Chris looks over to Victoria. Allison might not see it from this angle, but her smile has turned brittle, and her hand is on the haft of the knife. Scott's the floppy-haired teen, and if Chris is right, his only real friend is the teenaged werewolf with the Jeep.

But what werewolf, teenaged or no, would ever walk into a house he has to know is full of hunters? And Chris is sure the werewolf recognized him in the school parking lot the Monday after the full moon; the frightened, bone-chilled expression could have meant nothing else.

"Bring him on in here," Chris says. "I'm almost done with this custard. We might get a sit-down breakfast, for once."

Allison nods, then leaves. He half expects the werewolf to out himself and his hearing by not needing instruction, but he follows Allison willingly enough. When Chris looks him over, he sees nothing new about him. Just a teenaged boy with buzzed hair and bad taste in tee-shirts, an upturned nose and prey-animal eyes. Without blood on his hands and mouth, without his eyes glowing blue, he looks less like a werewolf and more like something a werewolf would chase through the woods.

"Have a seat," Chris says, and nods toward one of the stools at the breakfast nook, turning the bowl in his hands as he whisks.

Stiles sits, saying nothing — from the way his eyes rove around the room and the way he chews his lip, Chris bets it's a struggle for him — while Allison hovers in the doorway, clearly curious but not quite willing to ask, just yet.

Victoria looks up from the counter and smiles at Allison. "Your hair's dripping."

Chris watches Allison look from her mother to him, then to her classmate, and then back to her mother. When Victoria gives no sign of softening and Chris just arches his brow and looks toward the door, Allison sighs and leaves the room. 

The boy's glance darts to Victoria and then back to Chris, clearly questioning if she knows. Chris allows himself a mirthless smile, while Victoria simply opens a cabinet and pulls out a handgun. She looks over at the boy, and her eyes glint with something that makes him swallow.

"Allison said your name is Stiles."

"It's a nickname, but even my dad uses it," the boy allows as he seats himself on the stool.

Interesting. Either he's trying to protect his identity — all unaware that Chris is going to run his plates — or he's awkward enough that he didn't realize Chris wanted him to elaborate. 

"Allison says you've been avoiding her and Scott at school," Victoria says. "I take it you've been keeping your distance from hunters. Why approach us now?"

Stiles digs in his pockets, which, from a rival hunter, would have made both of them tense. But werewolves don't generally bother with weapons, and Chris relaxes when the kid pulls out his phone. He turns it on and idly thumbs around on the screen before finding whatever he's looking for. He carefully slides the phone down the breakfast bar, not approaching either of them.

Victoria picks it up first, and then looks back at Stiles, arching an eyebrow. She holds the phone out so that Chris can see.

The head of a deer, left by a door. Claws have raked all along the deer's face, leaving the skin split and gaping, blood clotting and black at each incision, and the same clawed thing apparently pulled out its eyes, leaving blackened holes that stare endlessly and unseeing.

"The alpha who bit me is... I don't know, feral? Rogue?" Stiles says. "He left that on my back porch. I mean, obviously he wants me to join his pack and help with his murders, because I'm going to be _so_ good at that, so I'm pretty sure he's threatening my dad."

The boy's face closes down, and for an instant, Chris sees the same raw, animal sense of priorities that had ruled the boy the night he'd shot him in the arm.

"You're hunters. You have silver arrows or wolfsbane grenades or whatever takes down werewolves, right?" Stiles pauses, and then says, "I want to buy some. Enough to take down my alpha. Enough to protect my dad."

If Stiles weren't being so serious, Chris would be tempted to laugh. In what universe does a _child_ becoming an alpha benefit Beacon Hills?

"I'm not going to help you become an alpha, Stiles," he says flatly. "Leave this to us and Derek Hale, if you trust him not to side with the rogue. His judgment seems spectacularly poor, but he's in a better position to handle that transition with minimal damage to humans." And Chris would feel less guilty about killing a born werewolf in his twenties than a bitten one in his teens. Assuming he doesn't succumb to the rogue's call, there's still time for him to re-integrate into human society, at least for a while.

Stiles's eyebrows lift. He looks from Chris to Victoria, mouth dropping open, clearly incredulous. After a few moments of incoherent flailing, he demands, "You're just going to let my dad die, then? Sucks to be Stiles's dad, alas, poor dude, we knew him not at all until he got his _eyes ripped out and his throat torn open by an alpha fucking werewolf_?"

The boy is clearly becoming more agitated with each word, though he's managing not to shout. Still, Chris can see the tension in his spine, the way his nostrils flare and his eyes begin to dart, seeking out threats. By the last word, the boy is openly clenching and unclenching his hands into fists, flexing as if preparing for claws, though he doesn't grow them.

Victoria leans forward, intense, clearly on alert as she asks, "You honestly believe that your alpha is going to kill him?"

"He's in my head sometimes. Dad's what keeps me human, and that'd be enough to get him killed," Stiles says. "But he thinks Dad was blind to something. I don't know when, and I don't know what, though."

 _Keeps me human_. Chris makes a mental note; he'd heard that strong family or romantic ties could anchor a werewolf to his human side, could bolster whatever was left of the human under the howling of the wolf. But the animal maulings started barely a month ago, in mid-December. The full moon must have been Stiles's first. How could he have learned to lean on that link so quickly?

"We're not selling you ammunition." Victoria says, flat. Her gaze slips over to Chris, sideways and canny, and she says, "But we won't leave a human defenseless, either."

Chris furrows his brow for a moment, until he realizes she's talking about the mace.

"There's a special mace," he says. "Most maces work well on werewolves, thanks to the overdeveloped sense of smell. Your sinuses are about three times as sensitive. But if you add wolfsbane to it —"

Stiles leans toward him, listening intently.

"It won't kill an alpha," Chris tells him. "But it'll put him completely out of commission while he's down."

Stiles considers this. His eyes roll around crazily and he reels on the stool as he thinks, teetering and very clearly almost-literally weighing his options in his head. He must not realize that his options are 'buy the mace' and 'walk out the door empty-handed.'

"Good enough," Stiles says, after a moment. "How much?"

"Call it eighty," Chris says, because, well, arms dealing has always been his cover, and there's no need to change that.

Stiles sighs heavily, but he digs around in his back pocket before pulling out a few twenties. He slides them down the breakfast nook, and Victoria reaches over to grab them. She counts them briskly, then nods as she crosses to her purse. She stows the twenties in her pocketbook without ever taking her eyes off Stiles.

Chris sets the bowl of custard down. He suspects he's over-beaten it, but as he tests it with his whisk, he's tempted to scratch his head. Huh. Perfect.

Stiles waits for Chris to put the custard down on the counter and moves to follow him from the room, but sits back down when Chris shakes his head. Chris has at least a little privacy as he heads to the armory and digs through it, pulling out a wooden box filled with ampoules of wolfsbane extracts, ranging from Trailing White to Nordic Blue. He makes a mental note to start up another infusion process; after this sale, he's down to four canisters of the wolf mace.

Stiles accepts the mace and peers at it curiously. He turns it over and over in his fingers, brown eyes glinting amber as he stares at it, probably looking for labels. Or possibly, considering this particular monster clearly has fewer self-preservation instincts than even most teenaged boys, wondering how much it would hurt if he sprayed himself with it.

He doesn't look for too long, though. After he's inspected it to his satisfaction, he tucks it into the pocket of his hoodie, and then turns to leave. He's out of the kitchen quickly, and both Victoria and Chris let him go.

Victoria's brow twitches when Stiles calls up the stairs, "Allison, if you're ready, do you want a ride to class?"

"That won't be necessary," Victoria says, smoothly striding from the kitchen toward the foyer. "Allison will have breakfast with us, and then Chris or I will take her. Thank you for the offer."

Stiles's answer is apparently non-verbal, but Chris hears the front door open and close. He sighs, and turns to pour the custard into a dish for the oven.

* * *

Of _course_ Stiles would be in the station when Angie delivered her security footage. Apparently, Stiles thinks the best time to deliver his illegally obtained modified pepper spray — and Weńczysław Stilinski is not optimistic that whatever makes it effective against werewolves is a legal substance — is when they're in the office. Surrounded by law enforcement. Fairly smart law enforcement.

Worse, David Whittemore is in the building.

"Shouldn't you be in school?" Whittemore asks, brow furrowing as he looks between Stiles and Weńcz.

"Got sent home for a fever," Stiles says. Apart from the faint flush his cheeks have been sporting since right around the time he turned, he doesn't look remotely feverish or sick.

Whittemore gives him a narrow-eyed look, but Stiles just shrugs while Weńcz strongly considers hiding his face in his palm.

Weńcz does, at least, manage to send the pack of deputies into the meeting room. They're all curious about something actually _interesting_ that happened in this town, and so long as the footage review doesn't happen in the bullpen, Stiles can't follow. The last thing his _suddenly supernatural_ and increasingly protective son needs is to watch a stranger destroy his friend's property just to try and intimidate him.

But Derek doesn't look scared, precisely, when Chris Argent starts cleaning his windshield. He looks surly; Weńcz suspects he was both resentful and unnerved throughout that encounter, if he's learned to read the kid at all. But on camera, he manages to keep his body language relaxed and calm, despite the way Argent leans toward him, despite the SUVs boxing him in.

Derek says something — Angie's cameras don't have mics, and they wouldn't pick up at this distance if they did — and Argent turns around. A moment of conversation; neither man backs down. And then Argent hands the squeegie he's still carrying to one of the men with him.

"What the hell?" Deputy Demetrios asks, shifting forward in her seat to watch as one of Argent's "friends" steps into Derek's space, then past him, and deliberately busts out the passenger-side window on the Camaro.

"Conspiracy," Whittemore says, immediately.

In the end, the charges laid are vandalism and conspiracy, and Whittemore suggests advising Derek that he can file a restraining order.

Carmichael, as lead and the one who signed for the security footage, will be one of the arresting officers on record — but neither he nor Demetrios, the other officer on record, nor even Whittemore has any problem with Stilinski being on hand.

The ride out to Beacon Valley is quiet, save for the occasional instructions from dispatch. Weńcz doesn't respond; instead, he listens as his deputies do. He can't help keeping an eye on the neighborhood as Carmichael — of course Carmichael drove; letting Demetrios drive a prisoner would probably lead to allegations of misconduct or brutality — pulls in ahead of him. The houses are large, the lawns all well-kept. It's not a cookie-cutter subdivision; the houses Stilinski sees all have their own look, their own weight and history.

Weńcz realizes that he doesn't want to know what systems Stiles broke into to find the Argent household this morning. If he's _lucky_ , his son only hit the school directory and didn't abuse police resources.

He very much doubts that he's lucky.

Carmichael and Demetrios, however, luck out. Argent answers the door alone alone. Hopefully, neither his wife nor any children are in the house to watch his arrest. Which, while not ideal in terms of preventing corruption claims, does avoid drama. And he wants very badly to avoid drama.

Weńcz doesn't draw too close to the house, not even within real earshot of Carmichael, Demetrios, or Argent. Instead, he leans against his patrol car and watches, ready to act as back-up if Argent starts acting out or turns aggressive.

The front door opens, and a tall woman with short red hair and eyes that, even from the end of her driveway, look sharp. She's of an age with Argent, looks nothing like him, and she's staring straight at Weńcz.

Ah, crap. Here comes _where are you taking my husband_.

She fires her questions at Carmichael, never approaching Stilinski. Thank Christ for small favors. Still, even as she asks, even as Carmichael and Demetrios answer and Argent says something to her, her gaze rests on Weńcz. He doesn't actually hide behind his patrol car, but her stare is like having icicles driven into his eyeballs. He hasn't seen a look that calculating since before he'd made sergeant.

This family is dangerous, Weńcz realizes. They don't care that they can't legally justify what they do. He should have expected it, really; these are the types who use property destruction and blatant threats as preventive measures. Who think that beating other people down because, if they're not running scared out of their skulls, they _might_ hurt others, is an acceptable way to behave.

He's just stepped in a coiled, hissing, seething knot of snakes. But he straightens his spine nonetheless, lifts his chin and meets Mrs. Argent's gaze across the distance. Werewolf hunting? Not in his goddamn county.

Argent goes peaceably. His wife doesn't make any fuss beyond her questions. She watches Demetrios help Argent into the patrol car, watches as Carmichael pulls out of the drive. 

Weńcz gets into his own car and follows Carmichael out. When he checks the rear view, he sees her face, unnaturally still.

* * *

Dad was supposed to pick her up from school today, but Allison doesn't see him, and ends up sitting on the front steps, winding her scarf through her gloves. After five minutes, Lydia sits down on the steps next to her. After about fifteen, she calls Dad, but his phone rings straight to voice mail.

"They've never done this before. I guess since I'm sixteen, they figure I can get home somehow," Allison says, and sighs. "I wish they'd just give me the car."

Lydia asks, "Your parents bought you a car?"

"My seventeenth birthday is next week," Allison tells her. "I think they're trying to keep it a surprise, but I've already figured it out. They're terrible at hiding things from me."

Lydia's mouth smiles, but her eyes are distant. It's a weirdly contemplative, haunted expression on a girl who spends so much time pretending to be stupid — and Allison still doesn't get why she does that, why she bothers.

After a moment that Allison spends feeling awkward, Lydia presses her palm to Allison's shoulder and says, "Come on. Get up. I'll give you a ride home."

"I should call Mom first," Allison says.

Her mother's response, when she calls home, is, "Your father had to — leave the state on business for a little while. If Lydia doesn't mind bringing you home, she's welcome to stay for dinner."

Mom's voice is warm on the phone, but something's wrong about it. Through the years, all of Allison's friends have called her mother cold, but Allison's never really seen that. Her mom can get kind of driven and single-minded sometimes, and she's not perfect, but Allison has never doubted how much her mother cares about her.

But that pause. And the warmth in her voice had been strained. Maybe it was just the cell connection. But Allison doesn't think so.

Lydia just arches a brow when Allison looks over at her.

The ride home passes in a blur. Dad's car is still in the driveway. If it was just a day trip, wouldn't he just take the car, or leave it at the airport?

Allison unlocks the front door. She's enough on autopilot that she muffles the sound of her keys and opens the door slowly, silently.

Her mother's voice trails in from the back of the house, maybe the kitchen. Something must have her really upset: she's almost shouting.

"I don't need your help bailing him out. I can handle _that_ much on my own, thank you. No. I said no. I just can't believe — it's ridiculous. We've never had problems with law enforcement. I meant the two of _us_ , Kate, not all of us. I remember _your_ little stint in Key West perfectly well."

Kate — does she mean Aunt Kate? When was she even in Key West? And bailing who out?

"No, I'm calling you overzealous. I'm — well, yes. Back-up would be nice. He's going to have to keep a low profile, after this."

Allison looks over at Lydia, who looks back to her. Lydia looks vaguely suspicious and judgmental of her surroundings, which means she's worried. 

Allison's worried, too.

Allison thought her parents were terrible at hiding things from her. She's not so sure, right now.

"Mom?" She calls.

"Just a minute, Allison," her mother says back, and then hisses something to the phone. A minute or so later, she comes striding out of the kitchen, smiling brightly. A little too brightly. Allison has never doubted that her mother cared, but her mother's never been this outright _chipper_ , either. It makes her seem brittle. 

"Thank you for bringing Allison home, Lydia. I hate that we ended up leaving her a little stranded, and I'm sorry for any inconvenience. Dinner?"

Lydia looks to Allison first, and then says, almost sunnily, "It really wasn't a problem, but I hope Mr. Argent's okay." Mom's brittle, too-bright expression drops for an instant before it goes right back up, and Lydia forges on with: "Thanks for the offer, but my mother will want me home soon."

Allison isn't sure whether she's grateful for the opportunity to question her mother, or worried about what she'll find out.

* * *

It's such a _minor_ thing to hinge the family's good work on, such a minor thing to be caught up by. But it's happened, and as angry at Chris as she is, as angry at the deputies, and angriest of all at the Hale beta, simple anger won't solve anything. No, this is going to require _lawyers_.

It's probably awful to think this, but Victoria's met werewolves she liked better than the attorney the Argent family keeps on retainer. They'd all been betas who'd kept their heads down, who'd understood their place and stayed there.

Victoria does her best to allay Allison's worries and keeps an eye on her while she does her homework. Allison hasn't done her homework in the kitchen since seventh grade, but today, she stays at the kitchen table and seems to be watching Victoria just as Victoria watches her.

Because she could use it, and it won't go amiss with her teenaged daughter, Victoria digs into the stash of good chocolate in the back cupboard. She puts the block on a baking sheet and grabs one of the sharper, heavier knives, then starts chopping from the corners. After that, she scoops sugar and cayenne powder into a pot, then heaps in cinnamon.

Allison turns her head interestedly when the smell of chocolate, cinnamon, and pepper begins to permeate the air.

"Is that going to be your good hot chocolate?"

Rather than answer, Victoria pulls the heavy cream out of the refrigerator.

"What's going on?" Allison demands. "You only make that for special occasions and when something upsetting is happening. Were you talking to Aunt Kate about bailing Dad out of jail?"

Well, lying will hardly be any use now. Of course the red-headed friend is brighter than she's ever seemed, and of course she had to make that damned comment about hoping Chris is alright. Victoria understands the drive to hide what one is capable of — she spends most of her life hiding in plain sight, taking refuge in supposedly feminine pursuits — but it's been a long, long time since she's ever played at being _stupid_. And it's hard to imagine what advantage a teenaged girl who hasn't been trained to hunt werewolves would find in it.

Victoria sighs, trying not to resent every word she's having to say. "One of your father's contractors did something… very stupid. Your father's been implicated in it. But we'll have him back by tomorrow, and your Aunt Kate is going to visit. We'll get this sorted out."

If a touch of the steel her own mother taught her slides into that last sentence, well. Who could blame her?

Allison's eyes are wide and scared. "Mom —"

"That's all you need to know. None of this is anything you should be worrying about," Victoria tells her. Then, softer, she adds, "We'll fix it. Everything is going to be okay."

After a cup of spicy hot chocolate, Allison packs away her books and hugs Victoria. Victoria pulls her daughter close and wishes she could soothe away these worries with just this. But she can't; some things are too big, and Allison is too old to be lulled with a hug.

Long after Allison trundles up the stairs, to bed, Victoria sits in the living room and waits. Her hot chocolate goes cold — she reheats it twice before actually drinking it — and then her coffee.

It's easily three in the morning before Victoria hears the low thrum of an SUV making its way down the street. Victoria sits up a little, sets her half-empty coffee cup on the table. She has her Glock in her hand by the time she opens the door.

Kate swings out of the driver's seat of a black Suburban, blonde hair a frizzy halo around her, and she's wearing gloves. There's a dent in the driver side door, but Kate doesn't seem too worried about it. Of course she'd make sure she finished her hunt before she came here. Victoria is almost disappointed with herself for expecting otherwise.

"Don't let Allison see that," she can't help snapping.

Kate rolls her eyes. "It's getting time you told her, anyway."

"Not here. I don't want her brought into it here." Victoria sighs and heads around to the back of the SUV. She waits until she hears a soft beep before she pulls the trunk open and grabs one of Kate's bags. "It'd be better for her to learn in someplace like Louisiana or Texas."

"How 'bout Kentucky?" Kate asks. "The McCoys are getting uppity."

Victoria says, "That's not the way we do things."

Kate raises her hands in a 'don't shoot me' gesture. Once they're inside, Kate asks, "So what are you going to do about this little legal problem?"

"I'll post Chris's bail tomorrow," Victoria tells her. "And then he's going to — to do whatever he has to do, pay whatever he has to pay, to make this go away. And as long as we're here, he'll keep a low profile."

The easy-going manner vanishes. If the same wasn't true of the Calaveras, she'd call it an Argent trait, to switch so quickly between open, fresh-faced friendliness and hostility. Not that Victoria has ever believed Kate's friendly act; there's been an undercurrent of rebellion and resentment to Kate's treatment of her since Victoria accepted her place in the Argent family.

"You can't be serious," Kate says. "My brother would never back down from a hunt."

Victoria considers pointing out all the reasons that they need to give the appearance of backing down. The Argent family's pride is a small price to pay to avoid worse consequences — and the real priority is removing the rogue alpha.

Instead, she says, "Of course he isn't. But Derek Hale has resources with local law enforcement, and he's gone and turned them against us. We need to move carefully from now on. Chris especially."

Kate stills for a moment, repressing some sort of reaction. But then she smiles, her dark eyes glinting with something that doesn't quite unnerve Victoria so much as unseat her.

"Derek Hale?" Kate asks. "God, he's — what, here? In Beacon Hills? Is he a beta?"

"Chris thinks so," Victoria says. "I haven't had a chance to make sure."

"Huh," Kate says, sounding distant, lost in thought. These absent moments, Victoria knows, are when she sheds any pretense at sentiment, and she's more dangerous now than with her shotgun in hand. "How about that."

* * *

Derek expected the rogue alpha's scent trail to fade around the school, but he'd hoped it might live longer in the thin forest near the Stilinski house. It does, in a sense: Derek has no trouble following the smell of human skin — a _familiar_ human scent, one he's smelled before — and burnt fur, medication, and some sort of hormone or chemical imbalance. It's distinctive, and the moisture in the air from the falling frost keeps the scent not only alive but amplified.

The forest is foggy as well as full of frost, and his breath leaves white trails in the air. The light is dim and blueish; the moon is waning close to new, and the stars seem distant tonight. He's more human, or, at least, the wilder side of him is quiet. The world seems more complicated.

He's never been good with complications. So he ignores the shifting, primate unease — in direct opposition to his wolf's curiosity — and focuses on what he smells, what he hears. In the distance, cars, mostly. A few dogs barking. Around him, small animals move and brittle branches shift in fitful winds. Leaves slide and crunch under his feet.

None of that matters. Only the smell of the alpha, only the faint traces of his presence. He tracks down the deer the alpha killed; the alpha tore it open. Even in the cold, flies buzz around the corpse. 

Derek slows his approach, delaying the moment when he'll have to peel back torn flaps of skin, but his slow step carries him to the deer eventually, and he kneels. The scent of rotting meat hits him, and unlike most of the biological smells he deals with, he can't brush past the unpleasantness by focusing on the information it carries. It's nothing but awful.

Breathing through his mouth doesn't help as he reaches out, touching bare fingertips to fur stiff and bristly with dried blood. He pushes it aside and takes a close look at the headless deer's torn-open sides. It's about what he'd expected, really. Maggots crawl in what meat the alpha left. There are links of intestine torn off, organs missing.

The alpha ate his kill. Not really a surprise; Stiles had wanted to eat the deer they brought down, and Derek's eaten a few of his own kills. His mother had always been adamant on butchering deer properly and taking the meat back home. Fire, she'd said, was what separated man and animal.

Fire, opposable thumbs, and critical thought. 

The deer's the only clue he finds. The woods that kept the trail alive for him give way to a forest road, and the smell of skin and charred fur and insanity peters out into gasoline, engine oil, heated metal, asphalt, greasy food.

Derek stares at the road for a long moment. Did the alpha come here by car, and then go through the woods? It doesn't make sense. None of this makes sense: if he's instinctively eating what he kills, he should be too out of control to draw the spiral for the vendetta, too wild to lure people with any kind of plan in mind. He shouldn't be thinking enough to send pointed messages, and he sure as hell shouldn't be able to drive a car.

He shakes his head, as if that could clear away his doubts, and then turns to see a black SUV making its way down the road. He drops his eyes, quickly, and hopes that looking straight at the headlights didn't trigger his eyeshine.

The car slows.

Derek tenses.

With a mechanical whir that buzzes into the roots of his teeth, the window rolls down. Derek takes a deep breath, smells gunpowder and wolfsbane and human, female, adult. Smells something so familiar it aches, sweet in his stomach until it turns sour and the bile rises.

"Hello, sweetie. Show me those eyes?"

Kate flashes a smile she has to know he can see, teeth brilliant white in the darkness, her blonde hair almost a beacon.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, ten thousand thanks to Innocentsmith, without whom this chapter would be far suckier, to Cheloya, without whom much of this story would be vastly different, and to Leviathanmirror, without whom this story basically wouldn't exist. Also, I'd just like you to know that I read three different police manuals (some of them more than once), two webpages on police radio codes, and cried a lot to Rhion when it came to guns and police behavior. Any mistakes herein are mine and mine alone; just tell me and I will be more than happy to fix things.
> 
> Housekeeping: I'm part of two big bangs, and I'm not nearly far enough in them, so after this chapter, I might have to take a week or so off from writing 'cast fevers.'

Stiles wakes to smoky, almost velvety shadow lined in the orange haze of the streetlights and the warm golden glow of his father's reading light. He stares into the darkness for a second, his entire body coiled tense and ready to spring, and tries to figure out what the hell woke him up.

The alpha? No. Dad has the wolfsbane mace, and he doesn't feel that rolling, rippling sense of here and not-here. Doesn't feel the primal rhythm of some heart that isn't his. In fact, he's wide, wide awake.

Dad? Heartbeat squelchy-quick but calm, smells a little like metal and a lot like turkey and mustard. He's fine; he's probably not the source.

So Stiles goes quiet and still and listens, straining to focus. After a few seconds, he hears it: a soft, pained sound. It's too choked to be a whimper, doesn't last long enough to be a whine. But it's a wet noise, low in the throat.

He pads over to the window, opens it, sticks his head out. He stares out at the washed-out, colorless street — day bright, but colors halfway to gone — and then draws in a deep breath.

Blood. Grass-leather-bone. _Derek._

Stiles slams the window shut and heads right out of his room, tripping down the stairs — he hears a ligament pop, feels the burn of a sprain, but between one step and the next, he's better — and all the while shouting, "Dad!"

He feels like a dog barking and scrabbling through the hallway. "Dad, Dad, Dad, something's wrong, something's wrong! Derek's hurt —"

Dad's heartbeat approaches, footsteps louder down the stairs behind Stiles. Stiles falls into the door, heart pounding as he fits the key into the lock and throws the deadbolt back.

Derek's eyes shine blue in the darkness. Blood drips gray over a brown-black lawn. At another deep breath, now that he's closer, Stiles smells too-sweet flowers, and rot, and it all turns cloying and thick in his nose, chokes him.

"What is _that_?" He demands. " _Why_ do you always come home smelling like you rolled around in something awful? And _why_ are you bleeding?"

Dad's MagLite clicks on. The beam sweeps onto the blood — suddenly bright red — and then over Derek's pale, shocky face. Derek is clutching his left arm with his right hand. The beam follows along his sleeve, then rests on Derek's hands.

Stiles hears Dad reach in his pajama pocket. He pulls out something that makes plasticky noises, then taps at it a few times. Stiles hears a dial tone.

"Melissa," Dad says.

 _"Weńcz? Why are you calling at five AM? Is Stiles okay? Are_ you _okay?"_

Even with the tense thread of fear in Melissa's voice, Stiles feels a rush of relief. Of course Dad called Melissa. And Melissa will be able to help.

"He's fine. I'm fine. You're at work right now, right?"

Stiles steps forward. Every wolf instinct is screaming at him to touch his packmate, to make sure he's okay. There's kind of the urge to, like, run his fingers through Derek's hair, or wash the blood off him, but mostly he just needs to touch. The human instincts, on the other hand, are very, very not interested in touching the injured dangerous thing.

Stiles touches anyway. He presses his palm against the hand that Derek is trying to staunch blood flow with.

Jesus. Derek's skin is cold.

_"Uh, yeah, I am, so I don't have long. What's going on?"_

"I know, I'm sorry. I need a favor." While Dad talks, Stiles peels Derek's fingers away from his arm long enough to get a look at the wound. It's a pucker that looks like — Dad's breath hisses through his teeth, and he says, "Shit, Melissa. I've got a young man with a GSW, but I don't want him in the ED waiting room. Need him kept, uh, isolated."

 _"You have got to be kidding me."_ Melissa's voice has gone from worried to dry. _"Weńcz, what the hell? Is this a police matter? If this is police business, you should call Greenaway."_

"It's not, yet," Dad says. "It will be."

_"If you bring a GSW into this ED, someone's going to call —"_

"I know," Dad says, sounding tired. "I'm about to call Carolyn and Whittemore. I just need you to, I don't know, take him for x-rays or whatever ASAP."

 _"Call me when you get here. I can pull him into an exam room,"_ Melissa sighs.

"Thanks, Melissa." Dad hangs up the phone. Then he turns a firm gaze on Stiles and Derek. "Stiles. Get to the squad car and get the bandages out of my first aid kit."

"Don't need it," Derek says.

"You're not healing. I don't want to find out if a werewolf can bleed to death," Stiles hears Dad say as he heads into the house, careening toward the kitchen, where Dad hangs his keys. The hall, the living room, the dining room all pass by in a blur. He grabs Dad's keys and heads back through the halls. He's at the front door again when he hears Dad say, "Safest place for you — too public for them to try to finish the job." 

"But the healing," Derek mutters, uncomprehending.

"Trust me, a patient who mysteriously gets better isn't going to be the weirdest thing they've ever seen," Dad says.

Stiles heads for the squad car. He doesn't have to dig in the trunk for the first aid kit. He pulls it open and stares for a second. The trunk light's not working, but Stiles can see well enough to read. He grabs a couple of different bandages and heads back to Dad, who's made Derek shrug out of his leather jacket. Stiles focuses on the scent of blood just enough to pop his claws and tear away the sleeve of Derek's shirt. 

Dad takes the a large gauze square from him, rips the paper off, and presses it against the sucking pucker that smells _wrong_. He presses down firmly, then nods and looks at Stiles. "Right. I'll drive. Stiles, hold this."

Stiles steps forward, grips the bandage and presses down. He's stronger than Dad, pushes harder against the wound, and Derek hisses.

The blood slows into a red-brown trickle. The tangy, rich smell of it still saturates the air, and he can smell Derek's adrenaline. The older werewolf mostly just _looks_ shocky and pained, but Stiles can smell sour fear, can hear the stutter of his heart.

Dad's not as calm as he seems, either. His heart's wild, thunderously loud, and Stiles is almost grateful when Dad basically herds Derek into the back of his squad car. Being behind the wheel of a car must make Dad feel better somehow, because his heartbeat calms a little.

The minute they're out of the neighborhood, Dad hits the lights.

* * *

The Emergency Department is slammed. Melissa had thought, before she'd moved back to Beacon Hills, that a small county hospital would have a sleepy ED. That the locals all went to bed by ten, and would bring in farming and kitchen accidents, mostly, not Gun-Shot Wounds and drug ODs and injuries while on marijuana, injuries received hiking in the woods, and injuries incurred from hiking while high.

The locals don't go to bed at ten. And the only real difference Melissa has noticed in the ED patients is less urban crime, more fireworks stupidity, and she sometimes sees them at one of the local grocery stores.

It's 5:07 AM, and one of the nurses whistles. Sheriff Stilinski — though apparently just plain Weńcz right now, considering the plaid pajama pants and stretched old sweatshirt, both of which are spotted in blood — plows through the entrance. He's practically pushing Stiles through the waiting room and triage by the back of his neck.

Stiles is holding onto a dark-haired, light-eyed young man. The man's skin is pale, even whiter than Stiles's, and the teen is holding a large square bandage to something on his arm.

No time to waste. Melissa pulls on a pair of gloves and motions the other nurses away, stepping forward and nodding at the blue-eyed boy. "This your GSW?"

"Yeah," Weńcz says. "I've already called dispatch. Do you have somewhere private Derek can —?"

Melissa nods. "Yeah. There's an open exam room. Come on, let's get him in there." She gestures, beckoning the Stilinskis and the GSW patient, Derek, forward.

Derek's eyes widen. He chooses the very next second to bend at the waist, his throat working. Melissa steps toward him, but before she can really process what to do about what's about to happen, Derek vomits something tacky and black into Stiles's hand.

"What the hell is that?" Melissa asks.

Weńcz and Stiles both look down at the puke. Stiles's eyebrows make a run for his hairline, and his mouth wrenches into a disgusted twist.

"My life has gotten so much grosser since you came back to town," Stiles complains. 

"Stiles," Derek replies, but he sounds a little breathless. "Shut up."

Melissa chuckles a little. "Good luck getting _that_ to stick."

Derek turns a hostile stare on her. His lips peel away into a sneer, eyes such a brilliant blue they almost seem to glow. It's a trick of the light, of course. Melissa waves Stiles away from the glaring twentysomething and applies pressure to the wound on his arm. After a moment, she gently places her palm on his bicep and elevates the injury.

She's professional enough to ignore the way he tenses at her touch.

A triage nurse and one of the ER nurses follow them to exam room three. The triage nurse — Claire — will deal with the paperwork; the other nurse, Evelyn, will take photographs.

As it is, Weńcz steps away and talks quietly to Claire, most likely giving her Derek's full name and address. Melissa hears the name 'Hale' and the faint pause between Claire's question about the address before Weńcz rattles off the Stilinski street address. She forces herself to keep her mind on waving Stiles away, setting up the camera, and keeping pressure on an artery just above the elbow, rather than think of the burnt out house in the Preserve.

"Insurance?" Claire asks.

"None," Derek says as Evelyn peels away the bandage they'd been using to stem the bleeding.

Everyone in the room stares at his arm. Even Melissa. It's unprofessional, but with twelve years in emergency departments all up and down California, Melissa has genuinely never seen this before. A clearly septic wound, almost gangrenous, so fresh it's still bleeding?

That Derek's skin is white and translucent enough to show his veins is no surprise. But the veins on his forearm are pronounced, tendons corded and straining, and even down into what must be capillaries around the entry wound, they've turned into black spider webs. Dark lines that seem to seethe and congeal near the raised pockmark of the bullet hole wind their way up from the forearm to the elbow.

"This injury happened _when_?" Evelyn demands.

"We're, uh," Melissa's throat has gone dry. "Evelyn, photograph that, and then I'm going to get an IV of Vancomycin."

"That's not infection," Stiles says. "Uh. Not sepsis? Is that the word? It's a, uh, really, really bad allergic reaction. And aconite poisoning. That's what the flower smell is, I think."

"The flower smell," Melissa repeats, tone a little flat. She takes a breath in through her nose, just to be sure, but all she smells is disinfectant and her latex gloves. 

"You mean you can't smell that?" Stiles seems genuinely startled. Next to him, his father looks pained. "Okay. Uh. I'll just — stand over here. Not talking. Well, trying not to talk."

Weńcz says, dryly, "Thank you."

"We'll do a blood test." She's certainly never heard of an injury turning this septic this quickly. Either Weńcz is lying about when Derek was shot, or something worth a blood test is going on. "But in case that's sepsis, we'll do the Vancomycin anyway."

Cleaning and disinfecting the wound, the blood draw, the call for the IV, the rush down to get an X-ray of the arm — it all passes in a blur. Melissa has the techs copy the x-rays for evidence. Derek glares at pretty much everyone who touches him, and when one of the techs tries to adjust the arm while standing where Derek can't immediately see him, he actually growls.

By the time she gets the growling, surly twentysomething back to the exam room, there are deputies already there. Their nametags read De Santos and Marszalek; one is tall and dark-skinned, hair a blue-black ripple in a regulation haircut, the other, a shorter blonde with broad shoulders and impressive biceps.

Weńcz asks, "You ready to take statements?"

The deputies both look over at Derek, at how pale he is, at the shadow creeping along his arms, through his veins. De Santos sounds mild and professional when he says, "Why don't we let him get settled, first?"

"Smart decision," Weńcz says. "Why don't you two go wait in the hall, then. And radio dispatch. I want somebody watching this room 24/7."

Stiles steps forward, pressing one hand to Derek's shoulder, and opens his mouth to say something, but Derek throws up again. This time, Evelyn manages to grab a pan, catching the thick, black substance.

The deputies pick up their pace as they head out the door, though Marszalek turns her head just enough to give Derek a sympathetic expression. Stiles wrinkles his nose, while Weńcz and the other nurses make varying expressions of profesional distaste. Melissa ignores twelve years of experience and takes a breath in through her nose.

And catches, very, very faintly, a hint of something floral.

* * *

Stiles watches as Melissa McCall carefully makes an incision and pulls the bullet out of Derek's arm. It's a smushed, stunted, twisted thing, and he hates even the sight of it. Derek doesn't even look at it. 

He doesn't flinch, either, just keeps staring straight ahead. He smells angry and scared and like stomach bile.

Melissa sews Derek's skin back together, and she never wrinkles her nose. She must not be able to smell the sweet, flowery rot in Derek's veins.

"Forty caliber," Dad says. "Standard issue. Stiles, you said Chris Argent's business was selling arms to law enforcement?"

Derek seems both angry and a little too detached when he answers De Santos and Marszalek's questions. He just keeps staring straight ahead, not looking at them, and his heartbeat is too fast to be healthy.

"Did you see who shot you?" De Santos asks. "Could you give us a description?"

Derek grunts, "Woman. Blonde. Late twenties."

"That young?" Dad says. He sounds like he doesn't believe Derek. "Short hair or long?"

Derek says, "Longish," then clenches his jaw. His eyebrows dare the rest of the room to keep asking him questions.

"So, not Victoria Argent? Because I have to say, you being shot with a standard issue side-arm sounds like retaliation to me."

Derek glares, but the set of his shoulders is tense. His heartbeat's too weak and erratic to be reliable for the Werewolf Hearing Polygraph, but Stiles is betting that it was an Argent, if not Victoria.

Problem is, the only other Argent Stiles knows about is Allison, and she's not blonde.

After a second, Dad sighs. "De Santos? Marszalek? Can you give us a minute?"

The minute the deputies are out the door, Stiles squirms his way into Derek's bed. It's a whole process full of flailing limbs, wriggling, elbows in uncomfortable places, Derek wearing a pained expression, and Dad looking at them both like he's about to mutter 'werewolves' again. But at the end of it, Stiles is pressed up shoulder-to-shoulder with Derek, and it seems to settle something in his stomach.

Dad heaves a long-suffering sigh, while Derek just looks resigned and grumpy.

"Put your elbow in my ribs again and I'll rip your throat out with my teeth," Derek tells him.

Dad interrupts the two of them before they start flashing eyes or gnawing on and/or clawing at each other. " _Derek_. What did she smell like?"

Derek stares up at Dad for a second. His face looks still, but his heartbeat speeds up. The darkness in his veins begins to spread, and Stiles shoves his elbow into Derek's ribs. The irritation snaps him out of whatever panic spiral or whatever he'd been in.

When Derek answers, his voice is clipped. A breathless but dry recitation of things he observed: "Female, probably late twenties. Drove a black SUV with a dent in the driver door. Smelled like gunpowder — some burned and some… intact? Unused? The basic smell. Leather." A pause, and Stiles can tell Derek's weighing his options, whether he wants to say this or not. After a minute, Derek seems to sigh. "She smelled like Chris Argent. And I'm — I'm going to need one of her bullets. For a cure."

* * *

Stiles has to get out of Derek's hospital bed before Dad brings De Santos and Marszalek back in. Dad drags him out of the hospital room by his arm, and with every step away from Derek, Stiles feels more and more unravelled. More and more unsettled. He can't leave Derek all by himself in there — Derek's never been in a hospital before.

The wolf-thing inside of Stiles makes him want to slouch and whine.

"I do expect you to go to school _sometime_ today," Dad says, dry.

"Hey, this is practically a family emergency, right?" Stiles hasn't really argued about going to school in years, since he'd been prone to panic attacks and basically terrified of being away from Dad's side.

Unlike back then, Dad doesn't cave. "He's staying with us, Stiles. And I understand that you're friends. But Derek Hale is not family." 

Dad's voice is firm, and his face is so stern that if Stiles weren't a werewolf, he'd believe every word. This is the voice of a man laying down the law while he deals with his dumb teenaged son.

But his heartbeat skips around. Not unhealthily, just in a way that sounds… wrong. Untrustworthy.

This is his father lying, or at least not speaking with hundred percent conviction.

"You don't really believe that," Stiles hisses.

Dad gives the hospital room door a significant look and lowers his voice. "I'm trying to keep you _safe_ , Stiles; that's my job as your father. I need you to work with me."

"Yeah, okay," Stiles says. "But I didn't drive here. And promise me you won't leave him alone."

"I'll stay with him as much as I can," Dad says. "Melissa gets off shift soon; ask her for a ride. I need to call Whittemore."

* * *

Turns out Dad's right about Melissa's shift. Why he knew that, Stiles isn't sure. Maybe he just has a good idea of how hospital shifts work, since they're pretty close to police shifts. He might have other reasons, though, which Stiles won't think too closely about.

The car ride home is both awkward and uneventful. Melissa lets Stiles stew, though she keeps flicking glances at him. For his part, Stiles doesn't talk.

He learned a long time ago that doctors and nurses try to soften up the truth for kids. And besides, it's not like Melissa knows jack shit about werewolves, or how their healing interacts with conventional medicine. Will the wolfsbane poisoning slow down Derek's metabolism, make any medicine go slow enough through his system to have some effect? Is that even what happens with werewolf healing?

Had he been hypermetabolizing his Adderall, or had he become immune to its effects?

He's not going to get any kind of answer to any of that until Derek is cured. And just how they're going to get a wolfsbane bullet from a family of hunters, the very same people who shot Derek, he doesn't know. He spares a moment to imagine ringing the doorbell at the Argent house and demanding a bullet.

Victoria Argent would give him one. Right between the eyes.

He's going to have to trust Dad to figure out a way.

Stiles showers, dresses, heads to Scott's. No fair to make him bike nine miles to school when Stiles is up early, anyway.

The only sound on the ride to school is the choked thundering of the Jeep's engine. It edges under his skin, and between the twinge of pain in his ears, his own irritation, and being forced to separate from Dad and Derek, he's on edge.

"Dude, you're glowing blue again," Scott tells him in the parking lot. Stiles breathes deeply and thinks about his Dad plotting with David Whittemore to — do something. Anything. To fix this. After a minute, when Stiles is calmer, Scott says, "What's wrong, Stiles? You look like crap."

He must be blissfully unaware that his floppy hair is sticking out at crazy angles. Stiles considers enlightening him, but apparently girls love the flop.

"I'll tell you about it later," Stiles says. Hopefully, it won't have to get mentioned at all. But if somebody related to Chris Argent — and holy crap, how is Chris Argent allowed to have other relatives? What god of mischief approved _that_ idea? — shot Derek, then he has a sinking feeling Allison's going to get involved somehow.

Maybe at some point he should mention to his best friend that said best friend's girlfriend's dad shot him with a crossbow?

No. It's bad enough Scott even knows werewolves exist. Getting him involved any further is just going to put him in the crossfire.

* * *

Apparently, Dad didn't get the 'do not involve Scott' memo. Stiles, of course, doesn't realize any of that until Scott drags him away from lunch. He follows Scott to the weird little alcove between the hallway with the sophomore lockers and the gym. Pretty much nobody ever comes here, except the occasional smoker who hasn't figured out that the smoke detectors in the second floor bathrooms don't work.

"Why didn't you tell me Derek's been shot?" Scott's stare is intense, and his heart thuds fast in his chest. Stiles can hear just a hint of a wheeze in his breath, but Scott doesn't seem to be feeling it, so he doesn't say anything. "And why does your dad think whoever shot him was related to Allison?"

"Because Allison's family are werewolf hunters," Stiles says, sighing. "That's why they moved to town."

"That's bull —"

But Stiles says, "Okay, so when did they move in? In December, when there were weird deer mutilations. When did Allison start school? The day after I was bitten. Why did Allison's dad bust out the windows of Derek's car? _Because Derek's a werewolf._ "

"Okay, we _all_ started school the day after you were bitten, because you were bitten the night before classes started back," Scott says, jaw set like he's digging himself in for a long fight. But then his eyes widen, and his voice is slightly squeaky as he yelps, "Wait, Derek's one, too? The guy with the murder eyebrows? No wonder he looks like he eats puppies for breakfast!"

"He probably feels too close to puppies. I think you mean kittens."

Scott just stares at him. And then he blinks. "Wait, Allison's dad busted out the windows of Derek's car? But her dad's, like, nice! Well." Compared to Scott's dad, anyway. And Stiles has to hand it to the guy: Chris Argent does not seem the property destroying type, on the surface.

"...of course that's the second thing you freak out about. Listen, you didn't hear that from me."

"No wonder Allison's freaking out," Scott says, because why care about the fact that Allison's family wants to _kill_ Stiles when Allison has been upset about something?

Stiles feels his temper begin to fray. "Okay, look, she's your girlfriend and it's epic true love out of a Disney movie, I get it, but can we maybe think about the fact that her dad busted Derek's car, and somebody _else_ in her family _shot_ him —"

It's the heartbeat he hears first. He turns, only to sigh as he sees Allison heading toward them. She looks a little troubled, even to Stiles, and she smells like gunpowder and something too sweetly floral, and like an unfamiliar perfume.

Stiles's heart speeds up. He closes his eyes and thinks about yoga, Dad with his _FINISH HIM!_ coffee mug on his mornings off, the big pile of cardboard boxes in their garage, two buckets of water, his unsteady, imperfect heartbeat this morning. Allison didn't shoot Derek; she's too young, she's a brunette, she doesn't have a car of her own. 

But she's been in contact with the person who _did_.

"So what are you two doing all the way out here?"

"Just passing on cop gossip to my bro," Stiles says. "His dad might get a kick out of it."

"Scott said he doesn't talk to his dad," Allison narrows her eyes. "Is something going on?"

"Uh, kind of," Scott says, while Stiles says, "No. Nope. Not a thing. Nothing to see here."

Allison looks slowly from Scott to Stiles and then back. She's quiet a moment before heaving a heavy sigh. "Why is _everyone_ I know keeping secrets?"

And, really, the irony is too much. Stiles actually starts to laugh, although it's a little bitter.

Allison's eyes sharpen on Stiles, and Scott says, a little cautiously, "Dude, I don't think it's funny. Why are you...?"

Stiles just waves a hand, and when he doesn't stop laughing, Allison rolls her eyes. She looks a little fond, actually, and her scent doesn't turn sour. "Ugh. Whatever. Scott, remember me talking about my aunt Kate?"

Scott gives her a dutiful nod. Stiles would be very surprised if Scott ever forgot a word Allison said to him.

Allison's expression breaks into a smile, tension easing as she apparently thinks fondly of her aunt. "Well, she's in town now! So it looks like I might get to graduate here, after all."

Wonderful. Allison gets to graduate with Scott and Lydia and Jackson, and Stiles gets to graduate under constant threat from Allison's family and maybe even Allison herself. Should he be happier for her? Because, frankly, he couldn't be less excited if he tried for a week.

"Anyway, I want you and Lydia to meet her," Allison continues on, blithe. She pauses, actually kind of significantly, before she adds, "You can come too, Stiles."

"Derek's in the hospital," Stiles says, barely managing not to add, _And you know the person who_ put _him there._ Allison looks stricken, but Stiles ignores her and adds, "I'll probably just do my chem homework in his room and bug him a bunch. Laughter's the best medicine or whatever."

Scott wrinkles his nose. "But you hate the hospital. You want me to go with you?"

Stiles just turns his head and looks at Scott. He's all ready to be angry, but Scott's expression is genuine. Before Stiles can decide whether to thank Scott or tease him, he gets a text from Dad.

_Send Scott to Argent house. Will provide distraction so he can get cartridge._

"Nah," Stiles says. "Go on with Allison. The hospital won't kill me. Hey, Allison, I kind of need to ask Scott a favor, and I kind of don't want this getting back to Lydia or Jackson, so..."

Allison looks ready to tell him that she'd never betray his confidences to Lydia before she looks over at Scott. There's a moment of silence, before Allison sighs again and says. "Okay. Scott, meet me after school? Lydia's giving me a ride home, since Dad might not be back yet."

The minute Allison's heartbeat dulls into the crowd around them, Stiles says, "Dad wanted me to ask you to search the Argent house for special ammo."

"What? Like, a silver bullet or whatever?"

"Bullet's for a .40, but the cartridge is probably custom," Stiles says. "Derek will die if we can't get our hands on it."

Scott is silent for a moment that drags on. The thing is, Scott is never quiet like this with Stiles; even his breathing seems muted. He's thinking, and he's thinking heavily, and he's thinking something awful.

"How do you know Mr. Argent broke his windows just because he's a werewolf? Maybe Derek did something — I mean, Mr. Argent just seems like a good guy."

"A great enough guy to be arrested," Stiles says, flat. "My dad went after him; you know my dad. You think he'd do that just because I didn't like someone?"

Scott's quiet for a minute longer before he sighs and says, "Okay, fine. But how do I make sure they don't catch me?"

"Dad's got that covered," Stiles tells him.

Scott just nods and looks like he doesn't believe a word coming out of Stiles's mouth. That's — honestly, that's probably pretty smart of Scott.

* * *

Scott manages to steer Stiles back to the cafeteria with maybe ten minutes before the lunch bell rings. Stiles drops into a chair next to Erica and then slumps forward, protectively, over his sandwich. Thankfully, Jackson has already left the lunch room, so at least they don't have to worry about that. Lydia and Danny are at the table, too, but they're leaning close together and ignoring everyone.

Allison looks at Scott and lifts an eyebrow, but he shakes his head. Stiles only really makes any sense if you've known him a while and can figure out how he thinks. There's no explaining him.

"Well, somebody's upset about something," Erica says. "What happened?"

Stiles grunts something unintelligible and bites into his sandwich. It's Allison who says, all sympathy, "Derek's in the hospital. I guess he must be pretty sick."

Stiles's eyes glow blue for a second, but they're back to brown when he turns his gaze on Allison. He's serious about thinking that Allison's family are werewolf hunters, Scott realizes. It sounds so completely crazy — sure, Allison's mom is scary, but Chris just seems like a regular guy — that the whole werewolf thing is starting to sound less than real. But Scott's seen the fangs, and the glowing eyes, and —

"Actually," Stiles says, and he sounds bright, flippant, but Scott can still tell he's angry. It's the dangerous kind of anger, too, like when Dad's voice gets all low and tense, or how Scott feels when he realizes he's clenching his fists in the middle of an argument. "Derek was _shot_ last night. Hey, Allison, doesn't your family sell guns?"

"To the police," Allison says, "not to criminals."

"Well, you're all new in town, your family business means you've probably got a lot of guns around, and a local just got shot. Don't be surprised if some deputies show up at your place with a warrant or a lot of questions. Nothing personal."

"Derek's not local," Scott says, because what? Stiles had never mentioned Derek ever, and Scott had never met him in the summers he'd spent in town.

"Uh, Derek Hale?" Erica asks, raising her brows and giving Scott a sarcastic look. "Yeah, nope. The Hales built the high school and a bunch of other buildings in town."

"He's local," Boyd agrees.

"He and Laura Hale moved out to New York six years ago," Stiles says. "After a fire destroyed the Hale House and killed the rest of their family."

"There's one other survivor," Erica says. "My dad was always talking about how big a pain in the ass it was, getting the life insurance company to pay the long-term care place after the medical policy maxed out."

She stops and looks down at the table. Stiles bumps his shoulder against hers.

The table lapses into silence, good mood killed by Stiles's attitude and Erica's sudden resurgence of grief.

* * *

Scott rides to the Argent house with Lydia and Allison. Jackson takes his Porsche, because he's Jackson, and he'll take every possible opportunity to prove how much better he is than everyone else.

The Argent driveway is full — the SUV that Allison's dad always drives is there, and right behind it is a big black Suburban with a huge dent in the driver door.

"Whose car is that?" Scott asks, looking deliberately away from where Jackson is trying to parallel park behind Lydia. Lydia is looking at the Porsche, not the Chevy, and her eyebrows arch in a way that asks, _Really?_

It's actually the kind of look that makes Scott glad he's not the one receiving it.

"That's Aunt Kate's car," Allison says, and then grabs Scott by the wrist and drags him up toward the front door. When Scott turns his head, he sees Lydia and Jackson following more sedately.

Allison leads them all to the living room. She and Lydia get their books out first. Scott follows, and it's all… easy. It'd be easier if Stiles was here, but Scott knows that putting Stiles in a room with Jackson pretty much only ever ends in tears. Worse if Stiles is on edge, and since he's so convinced the Argents are werewolf hunters, he'd be ready to rip Jackson a new blowhole several times over.

They're talking about balancing chemistry equations when a blonde in her late twenties wanders into the dining room. She smiles broadly at Allison and then introduces herself in a throaty, almost raspy voice, "Hey, there. I'm Kate. Who are all you people?" 

"Aunt Kate, this is Lydia Martin, Jackson Whittemore, and my boyfriend, Scott McCall." Allison's voice warms a little bit when she talks about Scott, and Scott feels his cheeks heat up in response.

He tries to ignore it, and hopes Kate will, too. No such luck, of course; Kate's gaze lingers on Scott in a way that makes him kind of want to hide behind Allison.

But before she can say anything, Mrs. Argent calls from the kitchen, "Kate!"

"Nice to meet you," Kate says, and then adds, "Allison, gimme a sec, I need to go talk to your mom."

"Sure, no problem." Allison's smiling as Kate heads out of the dining room and into the kitchen.

They've only all just settled back into balancing the equation when somebody knocks on the front door, then rings the doorbell. Lydia looks up, startled and annoyed. Jackson just looks annoyed.

Allison is the one to stand and head toward the front door. Scott follows, because this might be the diversion. Allison doesn't open the front door, just says to the khaki-looking person barely visible through frosted glass, "Who is it?"

"I'm Deputy Marszalek, with the Beacon County Sheriff's Office," the figure says, loud and clear in a woman's voice, but a touch by rote. Like she's just going off some script in her head. "I'm here to execute a search warrant. Please open the door."

"I, uh — I have to get my mom," Allison says. Her voice sounds dry, and she swallows. She doesn't see Scott standing by the front stair, just turns and hurries down the hall to the dining room and kitchen, moving with the same grace that first drew him in, though her face is pale.

Scott heads toward and up the stairs. He hears footsteps downstairs, probably Mrs. Argent heading toward the front door. He pauses at the top, turning the corner, and listens.

"—California warrant, ma'am. We're not legally obligated to —"

"If you brought it, I would like to read it," Mrs. Argent says, voice cold, "so I can point you best at what you're looking for, so you can _leave_ sooner. I am asking politely and offering my assistance."

Scott carefully turns away and heads down the hall, opening doors as quickly and quietly as he can.

In his pocket, his phone buzzes. He checks, and it's a message from the Sheriff: _Search guest rooms._

Scott texts back an okay, and keeps going. He stumbles into an upstairs office, what looks like it must be the master suite, and then Allison's room, judging by the trophies and the outfits spread out on the bed. After that, he opens the doors to two empty guest rooms, and then hits paydirt.

A white towel smeared in black stuff hangs over the closet door. Two duffel bags sit at the foot of the bed, one half-open and bursting with clothes, the other zipped shut. Scott closes the door and heads further into the room. He can't help but notice the way the bag bulges, weirdly lumpy, as he kneels down next to it. He leans into it to try and muffle the sound, sleeves of his hoodie drawn down over his fingertips, before he unzips it.

Scott has to stifle a yell when he realizes what he's opened: a bag full of guns. He doesn't know guns like Stiles does, but he can tell that this is way too many guns for one person to actually need. There are huge handguns with wide mouths that make him think of something out of a cartoon, and there are little tiny revolvers, and there are wicked-looking curved knives with edges that remind him of nothing so much as alligator teeth.

At the bottom of the bag, he finds a shotgun and a rifle.

He keeps searching through it, listening closely, but it sounds like everybody is downstairs. There are pockets on the side of the duffel; he opens those and, at last, finds boxes of ammunition. They don't look special, though. They're just regular bullets, oblong little pieces of metal that go in the gun.

But in one of the other side pockets, he finds a wooden box. It looks kind of like a cigar box, but somebody burned a symbol into the lid. It looks familiar, like he's seen it before. Chevron? Fleur-de-lee? Something like that.

Scott opens the box.

The box holds row after row of shiny silver bullets. There are other things, too, small bullets, big cylinders, cartoonishly huge bullets, all stamped with that same flower-whatever symbol. Scott grabs one each of the bullet-style bullets, leaving the cylinders alone, and tucks them all into the pocket of his hoodie. He shoves the wooden box back in the duffel, but he doesn't bother zipping it up.

Nobody's on the stairs when he makes his way down — instead, he hears voices from where he thinks the garage might be.

"Where were _you_?" Jackson asks, sounding both disgruntled and mildly jealous, probably for not having to watch whatever drama's going on. As long as Scott's lived in Beacon Hills, Jackson's never really been the type to care about about other people's problems. But Scott doesn't spare him a thought or an answer.

Allison looks stricken.

"They think my aunt Kate shot someone," she whispers to Scott, when he settles in next to her.

Scott's starting to think they're right. He doesn't want to think bad things about Allison's family — and he'll never believe any of this of Allison herself — but Kate's got a bag full of guns and a wooden box of special bullets.

"What do you think?"

"I don't know what to think! First my Dad goes to jail because he and one of his contractors did something stupid, now there are police wanting to search my house — Scott, this is crazy." Allison shoots him a look that's faintly desperate, but mostly he gets the sense that she's determined. "My family isn't like this. We're not bad people."

The really rough part is that he believes her. She's a good person. It's hard to see her dad as the calculating, car-destroying, Stiles-shooting person Stiles says he is, even if he's been arrested for it, and Stiles's dad agrees.

But he also believes the guns in the duffel bag.

"Maybe there's stuff they haven't been telling you," he offers. "People surprise us. Even our parents. It doesn't make you a bad person."

Lydia looks over at him and rolls her eyes.

Jackson's the one to say — with noticeably less scorn than usual, even, "It's not a betrayal if you didn't trust them."

If Stiles were here, he'd be rolling his eyes, Scott knows. But he can't help but feel a little bit bad for Jackson. Everybody knows he's adopted, and everybody knows that he knows, and everybody also knows that his parents told him in pretty much the worst way possible. A cynical person would probably assume that Jackson was making what Allison is going through all about him.

Scott's not so sure.

But before he can say anything, four deputies, Mrs. Argent, Kate, and Sheriff Stilinski all head out of the garage.

One of the deputies — the khaki-wearing woman who'd introduced herself and talked about the warrant — says, "Alright. We'll start with the upstairs, toward the rear of the house."

One of the other deputies is carrying a big plastic tub. Scott can see a few plastic bags poking out of the top. 

"I'll lock this in the squadcar trunk," he says, "and get another tub."

"Good thinking, De Santos," the woman deputy says. "Mrs. Argent, Ms. Argent, I'll have to ask you two not to move toward any of the doors."

Kate tosses a few locks of blonde hair over her shoulder. She looks completely relaxed. For a moment, Scott kind of wonders if the towel with the black smear and the bag full of guns belong to her. She's really calm for a woman only minutes away from being led away in handcuffs.

Mrs. Argent looks just as cold as she always does, but Scott catches her aim a glare at Kate.

"Scott," Sheriff Stilinski says sounding easy and pleased, way too calm to be part of a diversion, to be part of a search warrant team, and a little surprised to see Scott.

Scott rubs at his pocket, right where he stashed the bullets.

Sheriff Stilinski doesn't nod, but his face relaxes just a touch. He even stretches his mouth into a kind of smile, the corner of one lip curling up. It's gone almost immediately, replaced by a stern look. "Actually, your mother forgot her lunch, but has the car. I offered to find you and swing you by your house, then give you a lift to the hospital. That alright?"

"Yeah, that's okay," Scott says, but he looks at Allison. She doesn't meet his eyes, so he looks back to the Sheriff. "Can you leave during all this?" Is Scott even allowed to leave?

The Sheriff just looks over to the woman deputy. "Marszalek, you good here?"

"We'll be fine, Sheriff," the woman replies. "And I know Carmichael will call you immediately if anything goes wrong."

"Then I'll clear out. Thank you Mrs. Argent, Ms. Argent. Come on, Scott." The Sheriff drops a heavy hand onto the back of Scott's neck, and Scott casts a smile at Allison. Her answering smile is thin.

* * *

Scott's quiet, bordering on sullen, through most of the ride to the hospital. Weńcz checks on him at a couple of stop lights, but Scott just has his jaw set in an expression that's all too familiar. He's seen it on Melissa, and saw it on Mrs. Delgado before her.

They're only about three blocks from the hospital, and Weńcz has slowed accordingly, when Scott asks, "You're not going to try and convince me to break up with Allison?"

"I've learned not to try to talk teenagers into doing anything sensible," Weńcz replies. He feels his mouth curl around a smile as he says, "Have you _met_ Stiles?"

"So you think breaking up with Allison is the smart thing to do."

Weńcz makes sure to keep his voice easy — Scott has good damned reasons for not responding well when male authority figures are or seem angry — as he points out, "Her father did shoot my son. Her aunt shot an innocent man. And I'm man enough to admit Victoria Argent scares me."

Scott says nothing for most of a block before he finally says, softly, "Her aunt has a bag full of guns."

After he says that, he looks to Weńcz for a reaction. It's that stubborn mixture of challenge and wariness that does nothing so much as remind him of how Melissa had been during the worst parts of her marriage. Idly, he wonders if Stiles reminds Melissa more of him or of Claudia.

"Not for long, kid." Weńcz pauses, then asks, "Did you happen to see any serial numbers?"

Scott gives him a wide-eyed look, and Weńcz resists the urge to sigh. Stiles's near-obsession with Weńcz's job has been mostly a pain in the ass, and occasionally genuinely upsetting, but Weńcz halfway wishes Scott had picked a few things up. Not that Stiles is probably much of a teacher.

"Never mind, Scott."

The Sheriff pulls into a space near the hospital's main entrance. "Just give me the cartridge," he says, because he's still not sure how Derek plans to use ammunition to cure himself, and he doesn't want Scott anywhere near it. "And go find your mother."

"You mean the bullet?" Scott asks, a little uncertain, reaches into his hoodie and pulls out four different cartridges of varying sizes, from .22 to .45, because of course he just grabbed anything bullet-shaped.

Weńcz decides not to point out that no, he meant the cartridge; the bullet's _inside_ the cartridge. He'll mention Scott not knowing to Stiles, and Stiles will either attempt to teach Scott (hopefully _not_ with a shotgun shell, a tree stump, and a sledgehammer, which was how Weńcz learned when he was fifteen) or will tell Scott to Google it. 

Instead, he bites down on an amused smile and takes the offered shells. He dumps most of them into one of the spare pockets on his duty belt, but holds up the .40 caliber cartridge. "Just needed this one."

Scott just watches with dark, serious eyes as Weńcz turns and heads into the hospital, toward Derek's room. 

He finds Stiles sitting close to Derek, though thankfully not in Derek's hospital bed again. Weńcz hadn't seen any way for Derek to look worse than when he'd left him, but Derek looks easily as pale as Stiles, though tinged yellowish, his skin papery and translucent over black veins. There are dark smudges under eyes that have yellowed, too. Even his lips look pale, almost bluish.

"You look like hell, kid," he tells Derek.

Derek doesn't seem to have the energy for much more than a grunt.

"Alright. We've got the cartridge from the .40," Weńcz says. "What do we do?"

"Give it here," Derek says, sounding exhausted. His voice is thin, as if he can't get enough air. "Stiles, break it open." 

Stiles just stares at Derek, then back at the cartridge. "You're kidding, right?"

"No," Derek says. "Break it open, or I swear to god, I'll tear your head off."

Stiles laughs, dry and mirthless, and says, "Uh-huh. Pretty sure if I pushed you over you wouldn't even be able to sit up again." But he turns to Weńcz regardless.

Weńcz reaches over, hands their hard-stolen cartridge to Stiles. Watches as his son shoves the meal tray toward the bed and pulls the slug out of the shell — actually biting it and then jerking his head, at one point, which makes Weńcz cringe reflexively for the sake of his son's teeth — emptying the cartridge over a table some unfortunate patient is going to eat off of. The fairly standard nitro-soaked sawdust tumbles out, but there's also a weird greenish powder. Honestly, it looks like finely chopped marijuana, but Weńcz has never heard of weed doing _this_.

Derek leans to the side and digs one-handed in the pockets of his jacket. He closes his hand into a fist around the contents, then weakly uses his left arm to brush the plant powder all into one neat pile. Then leans over the tray and —

And lights the powder on fire. Of course he does. Because burning powder is a great thing to put next to a pile of _sawdust soaked in nitroglycerin_ , and it's an even better idea to do that in a hospital. Weńcz only barely restrains himself from trying to bodily drag Stiles away from the sheer suicidal stupidity in action. 

But nothing drastic happens. The power gives off a puff of smoke. Derek drops his lighter and drags the burnt wolfsbane into his right palm. He looks up at the ceiling for a second, takes a deep breath in.

"Derek?" Stiles sounds wary.

"Pull my IV out," Derek replies. "Should've done it earlier."

Stiles swallows, then reaches forward and yanks at the tape holding the needle in place on Derek's arm. After that, he slides the needle up and away.

"Now use your claws to tear out the stitches," Derek says. When Stiles just looks down at his hands, then dubiously at Derek's stitches, Derek snaps, "Do it!"

There's a long pause, and then Stiles's face changes. His eyebrows vanish, browline becoming more pronoucned, and large, thick fangs poke out from beneath his lips.

Stiles lifts hairy hands that end in claws, and slowly, carefully, tears out the black stitches keeping the bullet wound closed.

In one startlingly smooth motion, Derek slaps the palm full of burnt plant matter onto the wound. His breath hisses through his teeth, and his entire body trembles as he slowly pushes a human finger _inside_ the bullet hole. Weńcz moves forward, ready to restrain him, but then Derek writhes, face contorting in obvious agony.

Stiles steps between Weńcz and Derek with an arm swept out, as if to make sure that Derek can't lash out while he's in pain. When Weńcz looks, he sees that his son's hands are human again.

The full-body spasms last for maybe a minute, and then Derek lies still, chest heaving as he draws in ragged breaths. He raises his left arm, looking at it. The black lines have vanished, and already, his skin looks less yellow. Slowly, the yellow fades from his eyes, though he still looks pale, and his lips remain bluish.

It's a hell of an improvement, though.

"Not dying anymore?" Weńcz asks. At the roll of Derek's eyes, he says, "Good. Then let's get you checked out."

He's on his way to the nurse's station when Scott comes to a stop in front of him. The boy is holding his cell phone, and once again he's set his jaw in classic Delgado stubbornness. Weńcz has the distinct feeling he's not about to like whatever the boy has to say.

"Allison's aunt just got arrested," Scott says. His expression hardens. "Mrs. Argent sent Allison home with Lydia. They're going to watch a bunch of dumb movies."

Long before he had a motormouth for a son — hell, long before his first contract was up — Weńcz learned the power of waiting in silence. Silence grates on the nerves; anxious people, or people with something big to say, will inevitably say it if he just holds his peace. He doesn't even need to lift an eyebrow.

Scott gathers up steam, and then finally says, "Allison asked me to meet them at the movie place, and I'm going. I know you think I shouldn't, but she's not a bad person."

"Okay," Weńcz says, because he is not Scott's parent, although if he were, he'd have some choice words to say about the kid's knowing continued involvement with a family of vigilantes.

"I'm not saying I want Stiles to get hurt," Scott says. "And I'm not saying I think he deserves any of this. But I'm not giving up on Allison."

Weńcz just says, "I see. I'll let you pass the message on to Stiles." After Scott keeps staring for a moment, Weńcz says, "Is there something else you needed to tell me? Something you wanted to ask me?" 

Scott shakes his head, then turns and walks away. Weńcz watches him go, mentally preparing himself to pick up the pieces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun medical notes: the yellowing Derek is experiencing is jaundice, due to a mix of toxins in the liver and hemolytic anemia, because losing gouts of blood and not being able to replace them properly is all kinds of not good for you. Maybe someday, I'll write the full story of Derek And Melissa's Very Bad, No Good, Genuinely Awful Day (anaphylaxis was involved). But as a rule, having something in your system that your body reacts to virulently as both a toxin and an allergen, and not being able to flush it? Yeah, that's gonna cause some complications. Other medical note! Given that Melissa was able to prescribe medication in canon (not something an RN is allowed to do), I'm going to assume that Melissa is an NP, or an APRN of some sort.
> 
> Gun safety note: if any reader is tempted to pull a Mythbusters, _do not under any circumstances_ take a sledgehammer to a shotgun shell. Google that shit — it has put people in the hospital. Equally unwise is what they do in canon and here, which is light up plant matter scant inches from the propellant. _This is really honestly a bad idea, and whichever writer is responsible for that canon moment should feel bad._
> 
> Next up: if there's a thing you think is going to happen in the video store? You are quite possibly mostly right.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First: TRIGGER WARNING for werewolf-on-human violence, human-on-human violence, and human-on-werewolf violence. All events are fairly unflinching, and none of them are pleasant, but they are unskippable and unavoidable, so please read with caution or get a pre-reader.
> 
> Second: as always, ten thousand thanks to Innocentsmith, Cheloya, and Leviathanmirror. They are all inestimably awesome and wonderful people, and I'm lucky to have them as my alpha readers.
> 
> Third: I've adjusted the Sheriff's radio call to something that makes sense, because 'unit one', really? There is also an anachronism in here — a movie playing two months before it came out in theaters — but the joke was too good to pass up. (There's also an anachronism of Stiles and Scott playing Mass Effect co-op in an early chapter, when Mass Effect 3 hadn't been released in January of 2011, but I've left that in for what it says about the characters.) 
> 
> Finally, I am writing two big bangs and recently found out that my mother has entered hospice care. I am somewhat undermotivated, for reasons I hope would be obvious, and while I apologize for how long this chapter took, I have to warn you that you may receive the next one on a similar schedule.

Jackson's lived here all his life — well, for as much of it as he can remember — but it still startles him how quickly Beacon Hills goes quiet at night. It's like there's something in the water, or like World War II ground some sort of fucked up routine into the whole town, and nobody's broken it yet. Even without mountain lions or mutant coyotes or whatever tearing people to pieces, by sundown, nearly everyone is home with their doors locked. 

The streets are empty, shadowed despite the glow of the old streetlights, and Jackson gets the strange feeling of _prowling_ with the Carrera. It's like the nighttime city belongs to him, like he's at the top of the food chain.

Naturally, McCall ruins it, because McCall and Stilinski ruin basically everything.

"So, uh, what are we picking up?" McCall asks. Jackson doesn't have to adjust the rearview mirror to know that McCall's hand is threaded with Allison's, or that Allison is pale and drawn.

He knows it wasn't actually Sheriff Stilinski's fault — hell, the Sheriff wasn't even there for the whole handcuffs part — but he can't help but blame Allison's current distress on him, anyway. 

" _Avatar_ ," Jackson says. "It's long, it's got good effects."

"My parents never wanted me to watch that," Allison says from right behind him, voice only a little shaky. "I wonder why."

"They do keep a lot of guns around. Maybe they don't like looking critically at the military or imperialism," Lydia says.

Jackson grunts, "What?"

" _Avatar_ 's critical of imperialism and the military, isn't it? I read it in a review somewhere," Lydia says. "Gun nuts don't like that."

"My parents aren't gun nuts!"

Lydia flicks a glance at Allison. It isn't unfriendly, exactly. It's more like she's asking Allison to think about what she just said, and also what they all just saw happen. It doesn't last long, though, and for a second, Lydia's face actually softens.

Then Lydia turns to Jackson and says, "We're not watching _Avatar_."

"Okay, _Zombieland_?" Some comedy could do them all good right now.

"No," Lydia says.

" _Inception_?"

Lydia gives him a look and says, again, "No."

Jackson rolls his eyes as he pulls into the video store, affectionately nicknamed Sleaze-O Video by Beacon Hills's teen residents. Or not so affectionately; Jackson could swear that everybody who works there has greasy hair, creepy intense eyes, and is pasty pale. Plus the parking lot's badly lit, and the video store itself isn't much better.

"I am _not_ watching _The Notebook_ again, Lydia." He sighs. "We could get Danny to find a decent cam rip of _Red Riding Hood_?"

Lydia actually looks considering.

"No!" McCall yelps, because he ruins literally everything.

Jackson turns in his seat to stare at McCall, because what the hell? McCall's actually looking kind of pale, just like Allison, and his eyes are bugged out. Jesus. Stilinski must have infected him with his weird, or something.

"What, are you afraid of the big, bad wolf?"

McCall stares right back at him for a moment, before he realizes that Jackson is actually asking him to please explain why he's got to ruin Jackson's best chance of not having to sit through _The Notebook_ and watch Lydia get teary-eyed. He's quiet for another couple of seconds before he offers, kind of slowly, "Uh, no, it's just — uh, piracy is bad?" 

"I've got PeerBlock," Jackson says.

Allison comes to Scott's defense with, "Don't you think it's kind of... weird to watch a movie about animal maulings when we've got actual animal maulings happening around us?"

Great. Do these two idiots _want_ to watch that damned movie? Jackson just shakes his head and rolls his eyes, then opens his door and slides out. He holds it open so Allison can push the seat forward and crawl out. On the other side of the Carrera, Lydia does the same for McCall.

"We're not watching _The Notebook_ ," Lydia says. "We need a comedy."

"I said _Zombieland_!" Jackson opens the door to the video store at the same time he locks the Carrera, looking back to watch its lights flash.

Lydia says, "Too violent. I'm thinking _Love, Actually_."

The door chimes as it closes behind them all, and Lydia gently steers Allison toward wherever they keep the chick flicks. McCall drifts after them like a lost puppy. Jackson heads to the counter to judge the candy selection. He's only been looking for a second — and, honestly, it's just to have something to do while Scott and Allison figure out a way to ruin the rest of his night — when somebody pulls in with their brights on, blinding him. He winces and covers his eyes with one hand.

The door rings again, a slightly different set of tones. Jackson tilts his arm back down and looks, seeing only a dark-haired old guy in scrubs, with seriously nasty burn scars on half his face, before he has to throw his arm over his eyes again. 

"Uh, you left your lights on," the creep behind the counter says.

Crispy Douchebag says, voice smooth, "Not my car."

After a minute, the clerk says, "Hey, you're not allowed back there!" 

Jackson hears a door swing open and shut, and then footsteps as the clerk heads toward wherever Crispy Douchebag went. Jackson turns his back to the car so he can keep an eye on the drama. 

But as soon as the clerk disappears behind the door marked _Employee's ONLY_ , Jackson hears some sort of low, wet growl, like a really big, really pissed dog. Did that weird burned guy bring a fucking doberman in here that Jackson somehow didn't see?

And then there's — it's not barking. It's not even howling; it's some kind of _roar_ . The clerk screams, ragged and short, and then the wooden door splinters and some sort of mutant black _thing_ streams out.

Jackson has about two seconds to try and figure out if it's a dog or a gorilla before it's on him. It bowls into him, head lowered while its shoulder rams his stomach, and he hears all the breath leave his lungs. He's just about to crumple, already falling over backwards, when the wolf-gorilla swipes a fist into his shoulder, and Jackson goes flying sideways.

His back hits an endcap, and then he falls.

It's hard to keep his eyes open, despite the pain, despite the _fury_ as the thing goes after Lydia next. It grabs her by the back of the neck, dragging her toward it, and then tosses her into a bunch of shelves. Lydia yelps as she goes, but the yelp turns into a soft whine of pain, and then she's quiet, and the thing is headed straight for Allison, who's running for the door — 

Its hand scrapes the back of her neck, with claws that glint bone-white, tooth-white, and then Scott tries to pull it away from her.

Jackson manages to sort of sit up as he watches the thing turn and immediately rip into Scott. It's like watching a dog turn on somebody trying to bust up a fight, fast and savage — one minute it's got its claws in Allison; the next, it's torn a chunk out of Scott's chest. It's on top of Scott in an eyeblink, its jaws open and teeth bright, drool dripping — 

And Allison, one hand on her bleeding neck, chucks a DVD case at its head. 

It turns around and snarls at her, but Allison whirls, too fast, and grabs a DVD tree. She shakes it around first, scattering DVD's all over the floor, then picks it up and holds it like some kind of lance or spear, and jabs it at the dog. It dodges, but it starts heading back toward her.

Jackson digs in his pocket for his cell phone, flips it open, and dials three numbers.

"9-1-1," a woman says into his ear. "What is your emergency?"

The gorilla-dog-thing's head jerks up and it stares at Jackson. Almost like it heard the dispatch lady. Almost like it understands what she was saying.

"There's a — there's a giant dog," he says. "It's hurting people. It knocked Lydia into some shelves and it scratched Allison and it tore McCall open —"

"Take a deep breath, sir. What is your name and location?"

He draws in air, sucks it in and feels it shudder all the way through him. "Jackson." He fights down the shakes and quiets his voice again, tries to whisper — like that's going to stop the fucking dog from hearing him — when he says, "This is Jackson Whittemore, and we're at the, uh, the crappy video store. On Elm Street. I forget the name. The sleazy place."

The dog peels its lips back from its teeth and growls at him. Like it didn't want him to answer that. Which is crazy, but Allison and the dog are in some kind of stand-off, so maybe it's not as crazy as it sounds.

"Elm Street Video. I'm dispatching police and an ambulance to your location. Is the dog still there? Can you move to a safe place? Are you injured, Jackson?"

"I — it knocked me down, but I think I'm okay," he says. "But there's three people hurt, two of them really badly. And I think it killed a guy, but I didn't see it. Just heard him screaming. He's quiet now. The dog's still here; I can't go anywhere. It's growling at me."

"Jackson, I need you to try and keep looking at it, and to back away from it slowly. Is there a door or obstacle you can get behind?"

"It tore _through_ a fucking door to get in here!"

"I understand, Jackson. Police and animal control will be there soon," the dispatch woman says, voice soothing and slow. "Take a deep breath and try to move slowly away from the dog, even if only just to the side, so it doesn't have a direct path to you. Can you do that? Can you do that without making any loud noises?"

Jackson tries to stand, but he has to quit, choking back a hurt noise. He squeezes his eyes shut for a second and just breathes in and out. "I can't — I can't move. My back hurts too much. I — shit! Holy shit!"

The dog's ears have pricked, and now it's growling again. But this time it just darts to the side, into the maze of DVD shelves, bounding for the storefront. It doesn't even pause or change direction at the window, just lowers its head and charges right at it. It hits, and glass shatters.

In his ear, the dispatcher says, "Jackson? Jackson, I need you to tell me what's going on."

In the background, above the roaring in his ears, he hears the mechanical wails that mean police or ambulances or fire trucks are on their way.

"Sirens," Jackson says, numb. "I hear sirens. It ran away — it ran right through the window. Broke the glass and everything." 

"Okay. Stay with me, Jackson. You're not alone. Police and ambulances are on their way. Just take deep breaths, and try and tell me the situation."

"Uh. Lydia's down, and she's been quiet for a long time." He can't help the way his voice cracks. "I don't — I don't think she's okay. McCall is on the ground, but I can hear him breathing. I heard the counter guy scream, and he's been quiet, too. There was a burnt-looking asswipe, but I think he got taken out. Haven't seen or heard him. Allison's… uh, the only one standing."

"All right. I'm going to stay with you until the police arrive, so keep talking to me, Jackson. What do you mean standing?"

"I mean she's standing," he snaps. "She's the only one of us not on the ground, and she just fucking tried to stab the dog with a DVD tree. Didn't work, but she's the only person here who wasn't _useless_ or hurt."

After that, it's just a long series of questions that he either can't answer or infuriate him, and then a pair of cop cars pull in, lights flashing and sirens blaring. The sirens cut out quick, but the lights are still flashing, a dizzying blur of red and blue, and brown-dressed deputies are pouring into the video store. There's scarcely a moment between the deputies coming in and then paramedics, rushing first for Scott and then for Lydia.

One of the deputies pulls Allison aside, while another follows the path of destruction to the employees only room. A third deputy makes her way to Jackson. She kneels down so she can look him in the eye, but everything's a repeat of the same stupid bullshit questions he just spent the last ten minutes answering.

* * *

Stiles probably shouldn't be so vindictively glad that Kate Argent's been arrested. Yes, she shot Derek, and her brother shot Stiles, but still: Kate Argent is related to Allison, and Allison's life has got to be in some sort of tail spin right now. She's given no sign that she even knows werewolves are a thing, so these arrests are probably confusing and hurtful.

Stiles feels bad for her. He does. And it's kind of worrying that he hasn't heard from Scott. 

But it's not like they get to just walk around shooting people.

As it is, Stiles finds himself failing to concentrate on his homework. He's almost grateful when Derek gives him an exasperated look, shrugs into his beaten leather jacket, and strides out from the room, into the night. He doesn't say where he's going, and Stiles doesn't ask.

He's totally, absolutely not the least bit curious about where Derek could be going. That would be pointless.

It's a relief when Dad comes home on a meal break. It means he can shovel healthyish food at Dad and pester him about the arrested Argents, and whether Chris has been released on bail yet.

But Dad dodges all his questions and gives him a serious look. "You heard from Scott?"

"Uh, no. Why? Did something happen?"

Dad's scent turns sour with some kind of distress and his heartbeat ticks up for a couple of seconds, but his heart and his voice are steady when he shakes his head and says, "No, I just thought he'd have called or texted you. You've been joined at the hip for almost a year now."

Stiles actually can't think of anything to say to that. Of course Scott will call. Scott always calls.

But he and Scott have been splitting apart ever since Scott started dating Allison.

Dad seems to see exactly what Stiles is thinking, because he claps Stiles on the back of the neck. Stiles goes limp for a second before he recovers himself.

"Come on," Dad says. "In the car. I'm keeping an eye on you tonight."

Dad's just let dispatch know he's back on shift, and steered his car toward his usual beat, when the radio comes alive with with a staticky, "County Eleven-Hundred, do you copy?"

"Dispatch, this is County Eleven-Hundred," Dad says, glaring at Stiles before he can even touch the radio. "Ten-two, copy fine."

"County Eleven-Hundred, we have reports of a nine-five-five-adam at the Elm Street Video."

Stiles feels his forehead wrinkle as he tries to pull the Beacon County codes out of his head. But he can't help jerking to look at his father as it comes back to him: vicious animal.

Dad's response is a series of coded questions, but it translates to Dad asking how bad, and dispatch telling him that at least one person is down and an ambulance has been requested. If Dad's using the codes because he thinks Stiles doesn't understand them, he's wrong, but Stiles suspects Dad just defaults to the codes because he's been in law enforcement for, like, twenty years.

After that, they're careening through the streets. Dad has his lights and sirens on. The lights just turn the darkened town into a weird, bluish blur — not that the world around him isn't already slightly bluish, all its colors washed out — but the sirens make him cringe. He forces himself not to clamp his hands over his ears; the ADHD has always left him sensitive to loud sounds. He's not about to give up on being in law enforcement just because he's a werewolf now.

"Stay in the car," Dad says when the squadcar finally stops. He says it firmly, with the kind of easy authority that makes it easy for Stiles to focus. It's an order, and yet his father sounds reasonable, and it makes him want to listen.

Stiles tries to look out the windows and windshield to get some picture of what's happening, but the two different ambulances and the milling bodies of deputies block his vision. Worse, the squadcars are all running their lights, washing the world in flares of blue in weird counterpoint to each other, and the ambulances have left their emergency lights on, too, which makes the world flare a weak red his eyes don't seem to like. Every bright second stabs into his brain like icepicks through the ocular nerve.

But staying in the car doesn't mean he can't hear or smell what's going on, even if trying to see for crap hurts his head. Stiles takes a deep breath, listens for familiar heartbeats.

He hears two heartbeats he's sure he recognizes, but he can't place them. One is faster than the usual, the other slower. And there's a very weak heart beating in one of the ambulances — doing its job, but slowly, like it's tired.

He rolls down the window, and the scents that have been teasing his nose slam straight in, so thick he can feel them in his mouth. Blood. Fear. Anger. The rogue alpha. Jackson, Allison, Scott, some of Dad's deputies he's been around a lot. Something floral and classy that he's pretty sure is Lydia.

Scott's, Stiles realizes, is the heart that's beating too slowly. The blood in the air is Scott's, mostly.

He blinks, and he's standing by the ambulance. He's not sure how it happened. Between one moment and the next, he moved.

"I know him," Stiles says to one of the paramedics. "Let me see him."

"Sorry, kid," the paramedic says, looking faintly startled. "Look, get out of the way, we've got to get him moving."

He starts to swing the ambulance door closed.

A month ago, Stiles would never have considered just reaching out and grabbing a heavy ambulance door by the edge. Tonight, he does it without hesitation. He's not sure what color his eyes are when he says, "You're going to let me see him, or you're going to let me ride with you."

Dad's voice cuts in. "Stiles. I told you to wait in the car." When Stiles turns to look at him, he jerks his head at the ambulance door, at where Stiles's fingers are digging into it, and adds, "The best thing you can do for Scott is let the EMTs do their job."

He squeezes Stiles's shoulder. Stiles sighs and lets go of the ambulance door. Not because he wants to, not because of some instinctive obedience, but because Dad's right.

The EMT just nods at Dad and swings the door shut. The siren starts up again, and with that the ambulance is pulling out. The other ambulance follows, and Stiles realizes, his whole body doing the fever-chill flush of sudden acute fear, that he has no idea who's in it.

That's when he catches sight of Jackson, sitting on the curb and looking dull-eyed. His face is pale, drawn, and when Stiles draws in another breath, he can feel the ghost of Jackson's fear and stress. Next to him, wrapped up in a blanket that smells strongly of deputy, Allison stares out into the cold, shivering, her breath a gray cloud in the air.

Which means Lydia. Lydia and Scott.

Two of the people he cares about most.

He doesn't have time to think too long about that, because a tall redhead marches straight past the deputies, ignoring all of them, and kneels down in front of Allison.

Oh. Oh crap.

As if she senses his stare — or maybe smells his fear; if any human could, it would be Victoria Argent — she turns her head just enough to look behind her.

Her eyes only widen a little when she sees Dad's hand on Stiles's shoulder.

"Get back to the car," Dad tells him in an undertone. Before Stiles can argue, Dad says, tired, "Just do it. I don't want you near her, and it's best if you stay out of the department's way."

* * *

Considering more than ten years as a Beacon County Sheriff's Deputy, and another eight as the Sheriff, Weńcz would expect to be used to the sheer mind-numbing _glut_ of paperwork. But as he stares at the pile of reports on his desk — reports from dispatch, the ambulance requests, reports from his deputies — all he can think about is how his desk is completely covered in dead tree. 

The light from the window behind his head turns the paper bright white, illuminates the grain in the desk's wood. Weńcz repositions a particularly shiny plaque so he can see the roof of the building behind that window. He reaches for a pen.

He has reports to hand back for corrections. Most of his deputies have been at this for years; why can they not fill out a damn fact sheet right? It asks all the pertinent questions.

He's not actually pissed at his staff, though, and he knows it. He's just allowing himself some bitterness, after an immensely uncomfortable conversation with Victoria Argent. A conversation in which her gaze had repeatedly flicked over to Stiles in the squard car. Looking back, Weńcz suspects they had about three different conversations in one, but he doesn't like to guess about the conclusions other people might draw.

Someone knocks at his office door. After a moment, Deputy Demetrios opens it just enough to pop her head in. 

"Sheriff, Derek Hale's here to see you. And, uh, we got an ID on the Jane Doe who's been in the morgue since around the new year." At Weńcz's arched brow, Demetrios says, "Her name is Laura Hale, sir. Her brother just identified her."

"Shit," Weńcz says. "Those poor kids have been done nothing but wrong by this town. Let him on in, Demetrios."

She gives him a nod, then opens the door wider. Derek steps in, slouching, hands fisted in the pockets of his leather jacket and pulling it slightly out of its proper fit. He nudges the door closed with his foot, not even bothering to look back, before he moves toward Weńcz's desk.

"I found Laura's notebook," Derek says. "The deputy said they thought an animal killed her?"

"The bites and scratches all looked too animal to rule it as homicide," Weńcz agrees, quietly.

"So there's no murder investigation."

"No _official_ one, no, but her spine was severed cleanly, as if by a tool." Weńcz stares up at Derek, then raises his eyebrows and pointedly looks at the chair in front of him.

Derek hesitates a few heartbeats, but then he pulls it out and sits in it. "It doesn't make sense. I _know_ she was killed by another werewolf; I could smell him on her. That's the rogue alpha." Derek pauses. Weńcz suspects saying that many clear, informative words in a row must have hurt him.

After a moment, Derek goes on to add, "But he's acting — not the right kind of crazy. The killings look feral, and he tried to eat the deer he decapitated, but he must have lured the insurance agent to the woods, and he was _thinking_ when he cut the bus driver's mouth. And that stunt last night — he went there in a car. He had some sort of reason behind it."

Weńcz doesn't bother to ask how Derek knows what happened last night. "So you're saying he's making a good show of being feral, but it's all pre-meditated?"

"He's acting on a vendetta." Derek's quiet again, looks down at his lap for a moment, clearly thinking furiously. After a moment, he adjusts the jacket again and places a small, battered spiral notebook on the desk. "I went by Laura's hotel room last night. She — she has a list of names, and he's been crossing them off. And now he might have taken a new beta, since Stiles won't help him."

 _What_. If Weńcz's life hadn't already turned so strange, the idea that the man who _murdered Laura Hale_ , presumably to take her Alpha status, is now completing some sort of murder spree for her would be beyond ludicrous. If they had the same goals, then why did Laura Hale have to die? Something doesn't make sense here. Derek's right about that much, at least.

And then the words 'taken a new beta' hit him. Another new werewolf with a crazy alpha?

"Jesus," Weńcz says. His voice sounds bone-tired, even to his own ears. "Who?"

"He might have turned Scott McCall. Scratches that deep, from an alpha —"

Weńcz cuts Derek off by holding up a hand, already able to put together the gist. There's a kind of crazy logic to this whole werewolf business, if you grew up on folklore and fairy tales. Especially the weird ones.

He should tell Melissa about the possibility. Hell, he should tell her about the Argents, while he's at it. Or maybe that's just borrowing trouble. Why scare her with the possibility of her son becoming a physical danger until it's absolutely necessary?

Weńcz asks, "How long until we know for sure?"

"The bite heals first," Derek says. "It's quick. If he goes twenty-four hours without healing, he's human."

"Alright," Weńcz sighs. "Text Stiles. He's at the hospital with Scott. Probably crawled into Scott's bed, which is just — is that a werewolf thing? Because the, the socially inappropriate touching is new."

"Wolves are tactile," Derek says, simply, matter-of-factly, like he thinks it's an explanation. 

Weńcz is starting to think that it's not so much that Derek doesn't want to be helpful but that he just doesn't have any frame of reference for how humans think. Then again, he was born this way, wasn't he? Weńcz suddenly feels a wealth of sympathy for what Talia Hale and her partner must have gone through, trying to teach their werechildren (their child-wolves?) how to act like humans.

"I'll walk you out," he says, and stands.

It's easy, to reach over and rest his palm on the back of Derek's neck. Derek stills, stiffens, but he lets Weńcz guide him through the office. He must understand the value of looking at least a little vulnerable, given he "just" identified his sister's body. Or maybe, as a werewolf, Derek welcomes touch in a way he can't advertize.

Derek has his phone out by the time they hit the sidewalk. Weńcz watches him slide into that flashy black Camaro, then turns and heads back into the station. 

"Didn't want to believe it was animals," Weńcz tells Tara as he leans against the front desk. Tara will tell Caroline, who will tell the rest of the office.

Tara nods. "Needed someone to blame."

"You think maybe she fell down something, maybe into something's den?" Weńcz half asks. He feels ghoulish and like he's failing Laura Hale somehow, but he wants a rational explanation planted in the underbellies of his staff's brains, where they don't look. "Can hardly believe the poor kid got chewed on for her trouble. I can see why he hates to think it, though." They grew up in those damned woods, after all, a fact of which his deputies will be aware.

"So not connected to the animal attacks that killed Orfeo Reyes or Eddie Greenwood?" Tara's watching him closely, the way she used to eight years ago.

"Don't see how it _could_ be," Weńcz says. "The damage is different." 

"Different," Tara says, slowly, and she has _always_ been too damned smart for her own good. He makes a mental note to watch her, even as she says, clearly only about three-quarters believing him, "Yeah.”

Weńcz turns and heads back to his office. He has paperwork and a spiral notebook to take care of.

* * *

Scott looks fragile. His olive skin is pale, papery, almost bloodless, and his eyelashes are dark half-moons feathered over white cheeks. He smells less like himself, somehow, and more like his hospital gown, and antiseptic, and the thread they used for his stitches, and latex gloves.

Before the new year, Stiles wouldn't even have noticed. Today, it bothers him.

Today, he wants nothing more than to crawl into that hospital bed and bury his nose in the crook of Scott's neck, or maybe his armpit. Somewhere that Scott is sure to smell like _Scott_ , and not like a hospital stay.

Instead, Stiles sits in a hard plastic chair maybe three feet from the hospital bed and holds onto one of Scott's hands. He can smell morphine with Scott's every exhale, and it's all too familiar a scent. Stiles guess that they're keeping him pretty heavily sedated, probably so he won't move and disrupt the black stitches that Stiles can't see but knows Scott must have.

Melissa wanders in at one point. She doesn't seem surprised to see Stiles in Scott's hospital room, or even all that surprised to see Stiles holding her son's hand. Her heartbeat doesn't even change.

Wry in a way that reminds him of his dad, Melissa asks, "Family emergency?"

Stiles looks over at her. He tries to think of something to say, but just ends up listening to her heart and breathing in her smell. She's not nearly as unaffected as her voice sounds, that's for sure. He can hear it in how her resting heartbeat is a quick pitter-patter, can smell the faint sheen of sweat and stress and anxiety.

"He'll be okay," he tells her.

"This time," Melissa says.

"What, you think he's going to get targeted again? Have you pissed off the secret mountain lion Mafia? Or coyote, or whatever."

"I'm not an idiot, Stiles," she snaps, which causes him to startle slightly away from her. 

There's no stopping the wide-eyed, probably faintly horrified stare he turns her way, because holy _hell_ how did she figure out _werewolves_? Whose brain even goes there?

But then Melissa continues: "I work in an ER. I know teenagers get hurt. _This_ time, all he did was go to a video store and get mauled by a — by an animal. But the next time I see him in here, it could be a lacrosse injury, or a schoolyard fight, or god forbid a car crash."

"Yeah," Stiles says, because teenagers definitely do get hurt around here. "How many stitches did he have to have?"

"A lot," Melissa says. "How did you get in here?"

Stiles just grins and taps the side of his nose. Melissa will think he means that he snuck around and maybe did something borderline illegal, after all.

After a moment, somebody knocks on the door. Melissa turns, says, "Hey, Jess," and Stiles can hear her heart race when she opens the door to find Derek instead of the nurse she expected.

"Ms. McCall," Derek says, startlingly polite, but there's a faintly hunted expression on his face. He's wary, though not surprised. Then again, of course he wasn't surprised; he would have smelled Melissa on the other side of the door.

Stiles hears Melissa's heart slow down as she relaxes. She sounds like she's smiling when she says, "Derek Hale. Glad to see you up and moving around already."

Derek pauses for a long, uncomfortable moment, and then says, "Yeah. Thanks."

He is seriously the worst at acting like a normal person. Stiles rolls his eyes.

"How's the arm? Any pain?"

Another long silence, in which Derek looks spectacularly grumpy. He says, eventually, "It's fine."

Melissa nods, but slowly, and Stiles is sure she's giving Derek the same look she gives Stiles all the time. The mildly disapproving and very dubious look. But she probably just thinks Derek's pulling that macho dude 'I feel no pain,' crap. She turns to look at Stiles and Scott, though, and says, "You'll let a nurse know if there's any change?"

"Yeah," Stiles says. "Yeah, of course."

With that she's out the door. Derek waits until her heartbeat is far away — well, down the hall — before he shuts it.

"Did you get _any_ of my texts?"

Stiles stares blankly at him, then digs his phone out of his pocket. He'd had it on airplane mode during class. Must have forgotten to turn airplane mode off when he left school early and then tried to find Scott by smell. That had been a long and frustrating process, just because Scott smells so un-Scott-like right now.

Several texts from Derek appear in his messages, but the one that matters is _Deep alpha scratch = Scott might turn_.

Stiles drops his phone, catches it, drops it again, and catches it just before it hits the floor. He windmills his arms around, but he winds up stumbling back against the chair, creating the kind of clatter that summons nurses.

Derek gives him a 'why are you ruining my life?' look, but it doesn't last long.

"Are you serious?"

"No," Derek says. "I just said that because I thought it'd be funny."

"Crap," Stiles says. " _Crap!_ Shit!" He rubs his head-fuzz, since he doesn't have hair to pull, and halfway starts to pace. The movement settles something inside him, though not enough. "What do we do?"

"We keep an eye on him," Derek says. "If he turns, we help him. If he doesn't, he doesn't."

"Jesus, Derek, that's easy for you to say — "

Derek cuts him off. "We need to know exactly what happened. McCall can't tell us. Who can?"

"I don't — Allison, maybe? Lydia's on painkillers, and Jackson doesn't talk to me unless he has to."

"Allison _Argent_?" The 'you are ruining my life' look turns into an expression that, on anybody else's face, would be aghast. On Derek, it looks like the single weirdest, unfriendliest blend of constipation and abhorrence Stiles has ever seen. "Not an option."

Okay. Stiles can get where Derek's coming from. He wants to go to the Argents' house slightly less than he wants to walk to the hospital's dentistry department and beg for a root canal. But he's short on options and shorter on time, probably. If Scott's going to turn, it's going to happen within the next few hours.

So he lets out an explosive sigh and says, "Derek! Allison's all we have."

"She's an _Argent_ ," Derek snaps. "You can't trust her, and you shouldn't even go near that family if you can help it. We'll find Jackson, and I'll make him talk."

Well, there went Derek's five day streak of not sounding like a serial killer. Still it's kind of promising that he managed to go so long sounding like a mostly normal person.

"Yeah, Jackson's dad is the DA. Trust me, you do _not_ want to go threatening or assaulting his son."

Derek stares at him. His eyebrows furrow more and more and his frown intensifies. After the kind of weaponized uncomfortable silence that Derek had used on Melissa, he reaches out and grabs Stiles's arm. Stiles looks down, can't help it, can't help but want to see those pale white fingers wrapped around Stiles's equally pale skin. They're not, of course; he's wearing a hoodie.

Derek doesn't even tell Stiles to follow. He just drags Stiles from the room, and all Stiles can do is careen after him while trying not to run into other people. He doesn't even let go on the stairs.

Derek moves like he knows exactly where he's going. He also moves like he gives zero fucks about anybody else in the building, like the whole world should just scrunch itself to the side and stay out of the way. His fingers dig hard enough into Stiles's arm to leave bruises, but Stiles knows that if anybody stopped them and pushed up his sleeves, they'd see nothing. No marks.

He spares an insane, disconnected moment to wonder how Derek managed to get a _tattoo_ , and then Derek is pulling him past a nurse's station. Several middle-aged women look up, startled, but the older werewolf pays none of them any mind, just marches straight past them and down another corridor.

He stops at a door marked _415 - P HALE_.

"Meet my uncle, Peter," Derek says, as he opens the door. "The fire — he was the only one who survived in the house. But he never woke up. We're not sure why; the oxygen deprivation, maybe."

Peter is extensively burned. An orderly has dressed him in scrubs, and the entire right side of his face looks like someone took acid to his skin and re-molded, reshaped it into oceanic whorls. It even deforms the shape of his right eye, which looks milky.

"Is he...?" But Stiles draws in a deep breath, smells the same wild bone scent he smells off Derek in his human shape, and knows. "God, he must have been —" Basically dead, Stiles doesn't say.

Derek's voice rises, though only a little. But being at an almost conversational volume doesn't keep the intensity out. He sounds fervent. "This is what they want for us, Stiles. There were children in that house. My father, my brother, some of my cousins — all human. _Don't_ trust hunters. Never trust hunters. _This_ is what they do."

"Okay," Stiles says, and if his voice sounds a little broken, so what? Because, yeah, Derek has basically opened the book of his own massive trauma and started shoving pages at Stiles with this. "Okay. Yeah. I'll talk to Danny, see if I can get him to get Jackson to talk to me. Allison still might be our only option. But I'll try Jackson first."

Some of the tension in Derek's shoulders eases, and Stiles reaches out to touch his upper arm briefly. He's already planning what he'll say to Danny.

* * *

Before Victoria knew how Gerard operated, she would have expected the Argent family lawyer to be someone who seemed proud, someone distinguished. But she's had more than twenty years to adjust to the Argent family and how it differs from the Belmonts.

For example, the lawyer Gerard keeps on retainer, Samantha Wilmott, is fragile and watery-eyed, with blonde hair and unsteady hands. She looks out of place in Victoria's sitting room. In the context of her job, she's like a knife sheathed in serviceable brown leather, but personally — 

Well, Wilmott doesn't take their money because she believes in their cause. And she didn't come to Beacon Hills because Gerard gave her any choice.

Chris doesn't seem to _see_ Wilmott the way Victoria and Gerard do. He thinks of her as, first, a human to be protected. Second as something to be pitied, with her shaking, the rattle of pills in her desk. Maybe he doesn't know about the stolen prescriptions in her purse.

"Bail is easier," Wilmott says with the confidence she only uses regarding the law, "when they don't want to fight you on it. I assume you and Mr. Argent have discussed him taking a less obvious role in the coming… events?"

"We're not idiots," Victoria snaps. She takes a quick glimpse out the front window — ignoring the empty spot where Kate's car used to be. Impounded as evidence, of course —and eyes the squadcar that passes by the house. Not _strictly_ illegal for the Sheriff to modify the nearest deputy's patrol route to include them, but she wonders if it treads the line of harassment.

Then again, the Argents have proven themselves a threat to the safety of people under his jurisdiction. He doesn't need to be biased toward werewolves to request that deputies on patrol nearby swing through this neighborhood. No, he's giving no outward sign of bias, even with that ridiculous charade last night. 

"Victoria," Chris says. It's not a reprimand, just a reminder. Victoria subsides, flashes a false smile that pretends to make amends for the sharpness of her earlier tone. After a beat, Chris says, "And Kate?"

"They'll let her out on bail eventually," Wilmott promises. "But the hearing's not until next month. I _might_ be able to talk Judge McKinnon into releasing her to house arrest. Small county like this, I'm sure their prison doesn't have the space to hold her until then."

"Even when she's out on bail," Victoria says, "she's out of the fight, isn't she?"

Wilmott nods. Not that she much considers the Argents' valuable work a cause worth fighting for. She's at least polite enough not to contradict her employer. "Even if the judge sets bail, she'll be confined to the house and wearing an anklet. Her involvement in the shipping side of Chris's business makes her a flight risk."

Kate won't like that. Victoria won't either; Kate does the family's work and does it well, but she and Kate have never agreed on methods, and their personalities have long clashed. Having Kate in the house all the time won't be easy.

"So Victoria needs to handle the rest," Chris says. He looks toward the stairs, toward Allison's room, reflexively. Uncomfortable.

Unless they initiate Allison — and they won't do that here, with hostile law enforcement and a rogue alpha on the loose; last night was a close enough call — it's all down to Victoria. She hasn't done wetwork in the field since Allison was four, and even that was an emergency. It's an excuse to get out of the house, though, and she's certainly willing to do her part.

But Wilmott looks startled. "You mean he hasn't called yet?"

Victoria's stomach crawls, agonizingly slowly, down into her feet.

"No," Chris says, draws the sound out. "Nobody's called."

"Gerard left Seattle yesterday," Wilmott says, voice thin. "He should already be in town."

Of _course_ he is.

* * *

Allison isn't in Lydia's room past visiting hours. Stiles can't imagine being persuaded to leave Scott's room just because of some arbitrary rule, but maybe the Argents dragged her out. If she was attacked by an alpha werewolf, he also can't see the Argents letting their daughter wander around Beacon Hills at night.

Still, Stiles is almost irrationally irritated when he leaves Lydia's room. Allison had been his best hope to hear what exactly happened, since Danny isn't returning his texts. But he doesn't have Allison's number. He'd avoided her too much to pick it up.

Scott wasn't conscious, had smelled only like himself and sleep and hospital, when Stiles left his room five minutes ago. Lydia's been out, as far as he knows, since she lost consciousness in the video store; if she's woken up at all, it hasn't been when Stiles was around, though the doctors and nurses don't seem worried. Stiles thinks they've got her on the really good stuff, but there are too many nurses around for him to sneak a peak at her chart without getting caught.

Maybe he'll luck out and Dad'll bring Jackson's testimony home. Dad and David Whittemore have always gotten along pretty okay. The Whittemores are always invited to the Beacon County Sheriff's Office annual barbecue, at least, as some kind of professional courtesy. So Dad has to have taken Jackson's statement by now, right?

There's a familiar heartbeat on the other side of the door to Scott's room. Stiles stops moving, tries to force himself to focus, but he only recognizes it when he tunes into a conversation between two nurses three hallways away. Apparently making instant coffee with Red Bull is a thing the high school seniors are doing — unwisely — and the person in Scott's room is Melissa.

She says, so soft Stiles doubts Scott could have heard her even if he had been awake, "I told you not to go with them."

Stiles knocks before he opens the door, tries not to think about what's happening on its other side. He's too familiar with the equation being flipped around.

Melissa's hand is Scott's forehead, and Stiles can see every moment of concern in the wrinkles on her forehead, the way her eyes have softened. Still, when he closes the door, she turns unerringly to look at him. For a minute she seems startled, speechless, but she finally settles on, "Hey, Stiles. What are you still doing here?"

"I guess I just wanted to be around if anything changed."

"Nothing's changed, Stiles," she says, and sounds exhausted. She smells like she hasn't left the hospital since her shift started yesterday, but he knows better than to say anything about that.

Instead, he looks at Scott, then shrugs and says, "Yeah, I didn't really think it had, but."

Melissa nods like that's a response that made sense, and asks him, "Did you drive here?"

He'd left the Jeep at the house and jogged, actually, because Derek is kind of right about the physical exertion helping. But he can't tell Melissa McCall that, so he says, "Nah. Derek dropped me."

"Then I'll give you a ride home," she tells him, no-nonsense. "My shift ended ten minutes ago, but."

Stiles turns to look more fully at Scott, draws in another deep breath through his nose. But all he smells of Scott is a thin, bloodless personal scent, teenaged boy hormone soup, stitches and antiseptic and medicine and the nurses who've taken his pulse or adjusted his IV. No wolf. No wild. No inhuman bone lingering just beneath the surface of human skin.

"Yeah," he says. "Okay. It's… it's weird just leaving him here."

Melissa slants an intent look at him, but she doesn't say anything. She doesn't say much of anything on the way to the car, either, and the ride she gives him to his place is, once again, quiet and awkward. He is two for two on really terrible car rides with Melissa McCall.

Eventually, though, she pulls up next to Dad's squad car. She gets out after Stiles does and locks the car behind her, her breath a white cloud in the hazy glow of the lights from the living room.

Theirs are the only three cars in the drive, which probably means that Dad's actual car is with the office mechanic again, considering that Stiles hasn't seen it in more than a week. He can get why Dad hasn't sold the ancient Taurus, since it used to be Mom's, but he practically never drives it. 

On the other hand, at least the station wagon gets on the road occasionally, and spends its downtime being babied by the station mechanic, who insists that there's something rattling in the engine. (There isn't. Mom superglued an old metal lighter full of ball-bearings just under the driver's seat as a training tool for her dogs.)

He shakes himself out of his stupid rabbit trail and takes another look at the drive. Squad car: yes. Jeep: yes. Taurus: no. Camaro: also no. So Derek's not around.

Dad, though, is apparently awake, because footsteps slam down the stairs, and then the front door opens. He's in a dark shirt and jeans, but he's got one hand curled strangely behind his leg, like he's trying to keep something out of sight. 

By now, it's practically instinct to take a deep breath. The first thing he smells is cold metal, and after that, a blend of sawdust, and pencil lead, and something almost sugary.

His service weapon.

"Melissa," Dad says. His shoulders and arms relax, but he doesn't move the gun. Then again, it's not like he can. He's not wearing a holster. After a second, he opens the door a little wider. "Why don't you come on in? How's Scott?"

"Stable," she tells Dad as she heads toward the house. "But still unconscious. He'll probably need some physical therapy."

His father nods at that. When he says, "I'm sorry," he sounds genuinely sympathetic and sincere. He probably _is_ sympathizing. But then Dad's eyes dart to look at Stiles, and the expression that crosses his face is a wince of guilt. Like Dad's realizing that he's probably never going to be in Melissa's position.

After all, anything that manages to hurt _his_ son, from now on, will either kill Stiles outright or heal over in a day.

"But he'll make a full recovery?"

Melissa says, "He's young." 

She probably meant to sound hopeful, or maybe dismissive of the idea that he wouldn't bounce back. She doesn't, though. She just sounds tired, and a little bit scared. Her heartbeat is fast now, and was fast all through the drive there.

Dad closes the front door behind them and turns the deadbolt. He waits a beat before he says, "Stiles? Anything to add?"

Wait, they're doing this? In front of Melissa?

The words that tumble out of Stiles's mouth probably don't make much sense. "Uh, he's still lying there quietly, and I'm pretty sure he has stitches? He doesn't really smell like himself. It's all thin and weird."

Dad gives Stiles a significant look, except Stiles has no idea what his father is trying to say. Does he mean 'don't werewolf in front of Melissa' or does he mean 'just go ahead and say if Scott's still human or not?' Stiles genuinely can't tell.

"He smells thin," Melissa says, hollow. She rounds on Stiles. "This is the second time you've talked about somebody's smell. What's going on?"

Dad sighs and scrubs his empty hand over his forehead. "Melissa, just — head on into the living room. I'm going to go put this back in the safe."

"Oh my god, you came to your door with your gun in your hand! You aren't even wearing shoes!" Her heart starts to pound, fast and loud. She's not just a little afraid anymore. Right now, she's edging toward terror. "Why would you get your gun if you didn't have time to put on shoes?"

So Stiles reaches out and gently presses a hand against her shoulder. "Come on. If Dad's doing what I think he is, you probably want to sit down for this."

He doesn't actually manage to get her to move to the couch, but he pushes and persuades and, yeah, rambles at her until she's at least standing in the living room, near a soft surface. Then again, there are lots of big, soft things scattered around the first floor, because Mom's balance wasn't so great in the last months before she stayed in the hospital, and she got tired easily.

Eventually, Dad stands in the entrance to the living room, weary and a little exasperated, but with a heartbeat that's mostly steady. A few double-beats, maybe anxiety, but otherwise slow and strong. "Show her, Stiles," he says.

Shifting outside of the full moon honestly does feel like wriggling into or out of a really, really skinny pair of jeans. The changes aren't exactly gradual — they're not slow enough to be gradual — but there's an order to them, and they feel like his skin is pinching and being pushed and compressed.

Melissa backs away, her hands rising to cover her mouth. When Dad steps up behind her, she turns on him, eyes practically manic.

"What the hell is that?" She demands. "Do you have it, too? Is it some kind of disease?"

"Sure, I guess. Lycanthropy," Stiles tells her.

Without missing a beat, perhaps without really _hearing_ Stiles, Melissa asks, "Is that serious? Is it terminal? What kind of degeneration are we looking at, here? Do you have it, too? Did Claudia? My god, what's the transmission method?"

Dad gently settles his hands on Melissa's shoulders and says, "It's not terminal. It's not degenerative. Stiles can't infect you. Claudia was not a werewolf." Dad pauses, ruefully, and says, "Well, she always was unnaturally good with dogs. It's a possibility, but not likely."

Very remote. Stiles is pretty sure werewolves can't die of cancer.

"A werewolf," Melissa says. Her voice is a stark echo of Dad's, emotionless and pained all at once. "You expect me to believe that?"

"Just chalk it up to people building folklore around a life-altering disease," Stiles suggests. Thanks to his fangs and the new geometry of basically his entire face and mouth, the words come out thick and lisped.

Unfortunately, Melissa had turned to look at him while he was talking. None of them can find any words as she points at Stiles's face, at his stupid Princess Monster Truck fangs.

When the pointing and staring don't stop, Stiles says, "Yeah, I have fangs now. I'm aware."

Melissa looks shell-shocked, though she gives a startled little laugh, while Dad rolls his eyes. Stiles takes a minute to re-examine that sentence in his head and groans aloud. 

"Pun not intended," he says.

That draws half a smile from Melissa, and a twitch of Dad's mouth. But Stiles can't keep his attention on their amusement, because he hears footsteps and a heartbeat approaching the house. Dad must see Stiles's focus shift, because he half turns toward the front door, just as the doorbell rings.

"Stay here," he tells Stiles and Melissa. He heads out into the hall and turns right, first, away from the front door. Stiles hears the soft ticks of the gunsafe's combination, hears it swish open and snap shut. Dad's holding himself perfectly naturally as he nears the door, but then he passes out of Stiles's sight again.

Finally, finally, Melissa walks over to the couch and sits down. She stares at Stiles like she can't quite help herself, her gaze still concerned and cautious.

The door swings open, and the slightly gruff, and yet soothingly authoritative, voice of an old man says, "Excuse me, sir, can I use your phone? I swerved to miss a deer and hit a tree, and mine isn't charged." The old man's heartbeat is steady.

Which is kind of weird. Wouldn't he be nervous after he crashed his car into a tree? Shouldn't his heart be jumpy?

"Sure. I'll call the station for you, too," Dad offers easily, and Stiles hears the front door swing open a little wider. "See if we can't wake someone up to get you a tow. Were you on County 19?"

"Actually," the old man's voice says, and cloth rustles, "no."

And then something makes a strange, repeating click sound, and underneath the clicking is a sharp buzz that makes Stiles's teeth ache. There's only a second before the noise changes, muffling — 

Dad cries out. His heart jumps wildly, pounding loud in Stiles's ears, and then there's a thump.

He doesn't even bother to tell Melissa to stay put. He's not thinking clearly enough for that. His father's heartbeat, the most important heartbeat in his world — something's wrong with it. He has to get there, he has to help him, that's all that matters.

Dad's slumped against the wall. His face is spasming, contorted with what's clearly pain, and his shoulders are a tight line. His entire body is tight, and his heart just doesn't stop jackhammering, keeps thumping and racing, on and on into forever, and there's no staying human. There's only his father's pain and the thin, weak moon and the endless, infuriated snarl of the wolf.

The old man takes one look at Stiles and smiles broadly. He takes the TASER away from Dad's shoulder.

Stiles only spares an instant to decide whether he wants to protect Dad or rip the old man's throat out, and then he's across the front hall, reaching for Dad, trying to put himself between Dad and the old man.

But it's just what the evil sack of shit wanted, because he just grabs Stiles by the shoulders. He has smile lines around his eyes, and his cheeks have familiar dimples, and Stiles doesn't even see the silver flash of the knife before it ends up in his stomach.

It's almost too fast, too sharp to hurt. But in the split second before the knife slides home and the old man opens his mouth to speak, it begins to burn, to throb. He can feel his skin and muscle weaving themselves back together around the cold metal inside him, can feel the heat of his blood start to warm the knife.

The old man looks him in the eye, looks down, and _twists_.

"You must the the Stilinski werewolf," he says, and god, his voice sounds like something straight out of a video game, too no-nonsense and reasonable to be _real_. "Tell me, boy, just who did you _murder_ in two short months to get those blue eyes of yours?"


	11. chapter eleven // a farewell: part one

All Stiles can do in response is whimper, dazed.

His stomach hurts. It's not like the pain of being shot with a crossbow — this is stickier, redder, blood-hot and squirming in his actual intestines. It's not quick, and nobody's yanking the knife out.

No, instead the old man is twisting it. He waits a few seconds every time, like he can somehow feel Stiles's stomach and skin healing around the blade, practically _accepting_ it, before he just moves it around a little bit. Just enough to remind his body, oh, hey, foreign object. Just enough to reopen the wound.

"I said," the old man says, "who did you murder for those eyes? Or did you not know their names?"

He squeezes his eyes shut. It's reflex to take a breath in through his nose, and he realizes — above the stink of his own blood and his father's pain — that the old man smells like Chris Argent.

"You're A-Argent," he says, hoping his dad will hear. Hoping Dad will recover in time to do something with that gun, because the pain leaves Stiles human. He can barely hold himself up. He's not sure he _is_ holding himself up.

"Who," the Argent demands, and twists the knife again. 

He can't help his pained whimper. Dad's heartbeat spikes at the sound, along with the scent of distress. There's a saltwater tang in the air. Somebody's crying. Stiles isn't sure who. Could be either of them. Could be both of them.

"I didn't kill her," Stiles says in a rush, like if he can just get the awful words out fast enough, they won't cut as badly. "I didn't. It wasn't me." He's just why she didn't want to live. He's just why it was all so hard for her, at the end. "I don't understand."

"Of course you don't," the old man says, somehow packing both hate and condescension into his voice, while Dad leans against the wall and looks murderous. A fourth heartbeat enters the room, and the old man looks up, away from Stiles. "Stay back! I'll kill him."

But Melissa must not believe him. Stiles looks over at her, as her heart hammers, and sees her holding his father's police-issue pepper spray. She aims it straight at the old man and presses the button.

A thin stream of something that smells like about twelve different kinds of terrible, all chemicals and pepper and fire, arcs through the air. It takes the old man in the eyes, drips down his face. He lets go of Stiles, covers his eyes with his hands. Probably on reflex, since it can't help now. By now, it's in his tear ducts and inflaming his sinuses.

The old man's breath turns raspy, labored, like he has to fight for it through the inflammation, and then he starts to choke and cough.

Which is right when Stiles's hypersensitive _everything_ decides to pitch a fit about the pepper spray molecules in the air.

Mostly, it hurts his eyes, and he can't seem to breathe. As he wrenches away from Argent — like moving is going to make the pain stop — the burn in his stomach redoubles. He doesn't smell blood, but right now, all he smells is some godawful chemical pepper mixture.

Above the sound of Argent's pained, awful breathing, he hears his father's heartbeat slow. People move around, and the evil geezer is moved away from him somehow.

After that, Dad drags him through the house and plants him over the sink. Something pulls on him, a slow squeeze outward that hurts as much as being stabbed, as if the knife is cutting its way out of him. Then he hears metal clatter as Dad drops the knife in the sink. Breathing becomes, for a moment, marginally easier. Then he hears the refrigerator being opened, something being uncapped, and Dad pours some sort of cool liquid in his eyes.

"Milk?" He croaks.

"Yeah," Dad says. Then, "Open your mouth, let it hit the back of your throat. See if that helps."

It does, though not much. He can actually focus his senses outside of one room, at least, and soon realizes that Melissa has stayed with Argent, who must be restrained.

"Dad," and holy crap, his voice sounds _hoarse_ , "did you handcuff an old man?"

"Nah," Dad says. "Zip ties. If the Argents sell to law enforcement, they probably carry handcuff keys."

Stiles nods. It makes him feel dizzy, but he's pretty sure that's just recovering from the knife-in-his-stomach thing. Not that the lingering effects of the pepper spray help much.

"Stay here. Do _not_ move. Melissa and I will take care of it."

Stiles just nods a second time, because talking feels like rubbing his throat with sandpaper. Moving his head makes him dizzy again, and he has to focus on not throwing up.

He hears hushed voices, and then Dad dials a phone. After a perfunctory greeting, Dad informs whoever he called that there's something of theirs at the Stilinski house, and they want to come collect it before Dad hands it over to the police. The Argents, then, Stiles guesses.

He sinks to the floor, pressing a hand against the rapidly closing hole in his gut. Already, the damage to his shirt is far worse than what's showing on his skin, and even though the skin feels cold under his fingers, it knits even as he touches it. All told, it takes half an hour to come back to himself, out of the haze of pain and the whimpering of the wolf.

* * *

Weńcz wants to think about it, wants to ask about the blue eyes, wants to inspect the notebook that Derek gave him. But he has to watch as Melissa carefully examines Stiles's healed stomach, sending Stiles out of sight with scant time left to make the trade for Gerard with a tight-lipped Chris Argent. No apparent permanent damage to Stiles beyond the obvious trauma of being attacked in his own home, and the conversation with Chris is mercifully terse.

No double meanings in, "I see you've met my father," and, "Get him the hell out of my house."

"That's Allison's father?" Melissa asks, while the silently fuming man practically _frog marches_ his father to his car. Personally, Weńcz can't help but be darkly impressed. 

"And grandfather, apparently. Scott probably didn't mention this, but his girlfriend has a family full of crazy."

"I'll forgive him for leaving out the supernatural part," Melissa allows. Generous indeed; Weńcz isn't sure he'd be so forgiving if Stiles had involved himself in the supernatural and he'd simply neglected to mention it. Especially if he'd been hurt because of it. Then again, Stiles has precious little sense of self-preservation on a good day, at least as far as the people he cares about are concerned.

Thank god there's so few of those.

"I'm putting a stop to the rest," Melissa tells him. Her tone is dry, but she's shaking. Heading for a breakdown, if he had to guess, and he doesn't blame her for it.

As it is, Weńcz just nods his tacit agreement with Melissa's excellent parenting choice, watching as Stiles makes his unsteady way around the kitchen. His son is practically stumbling from exhaustion as he drains two large glasses of water and inhales an entire package of sandwich turkey.

After a moment, Weńcz says, "Thank you, Melissa. I'm sorry you had to — see all that."

"Me too," she says, and cracks a small smile. "You'll forgive me if I move back to San Fran, right? I never had to deal with this crap there."

"Melissa McCall," Weńcz says, completely seriously, "if you even think of making me deal with this — this _insanity_ alone, I will put you on the shit list of every police department for two hundred miles."

She laughs at that, but once again he senses an edge of hysteria. After a moment, she holds out a hand and says, "Let me at least check your pulse. I'd _like_ to get your blood pressure, but I don't have a cuff with me."

So Weńcz gives her his wrist, lets her do a slow-count. When she's done, she nods at him. Apparently, his pulse is acceptable for the circumstances.

"I think you can slide on the ER tonight," Melissa tells him. "But see your GP as soon as you can." She's still and quiet for a minute that seems to last forever. And then she looks up at him, and the expression on her face tells him what she's going to ask. "Weńcz, the animal that tore my son open…?"

"Another werewolf," he confirms. "I've got some leads, and I'm going to get it off the street, one way or another."

By the time Melissa calms down and he shows her to the door, the Camaro has pulled up to the curb. Derek eases out, shuts the door quietly, then freezes when he sees Weńcz and Melissa on the front step. But Weńcz just jerks his head, and Derek nods.

Later, he pours Stiles into the loveseat in the dining room — and the way seeing a shock of dark hair and pale skin against the white of that damned couch turns Weńcz's blood to ice is Pavlovian — and lets Derek seat himself. He pulls out the notebook, because as much as he'd like to demand explanations for what the latest crazy Argent said, getting the alpha werewolf behind bars or in the ground is a higher priority.

"I've been looking into any connections for the people on your sister's list," Weńcz tells Derek. He slides the notebook to Stiles, lets his son skim through it. "Interestingly enough, the only fatality at the video store, Garrison Meyers, has an arson record as long as my arm. Started setting things on fire when he was about nine."

Stiles looks up at Laura's notes, sleepy-eyed but clearly interested. "Wouldn't that have been expunged?"

"Maybe, if he hadn't burned down an abandoned house when he was seventeen. He was tried as an adult for that, and the records of his previous infractions were submitted to evidence. Even better, Meyers used to be in the construction business." Weńcz is curious as to how _that_ ever happened. Not many contractors will take on somebody with a damned arson conviction. "He sold insulation. Five and a half years ago, he up and quit, started working at the video store."

Derek twitches at the mention of the burnt house, but says only, "Greenwood was the arson investigator six years ago."

"It's looking to me like the link between the victims is _fire_." Weńcz leans in and taps the one name on the list that he can't place. "Except for one. Adrian Harris is on the list, but hasn't been harmed yet. I've got my suspicions, but I want to know where he fits in."

"You think it's about one specific fire," Stiles says, slowly. "You think there was a cover up, and Laura wanted — that my alpha wants to expose it. Or punish everyone behind it." A pause, and Weńcz watches the wheels turn, watches that quicksilver ability to see patterns, something he got from both sides of the family, work feverishly. "And there's only one fire that we know for sure Laura Hale would have cared about."

Beside him, Derek goes very, very still. 

Weńcz turns to face him. Says it as gently as he can. "Is Peter Hale a werewolf? Is that how he survived the fire?"

"He is," Derek says, softly. "But he's not — he's not killing people. He can't even stand up from his chair. He's not even _awake_." With that, he's rising, so quickly he knocks his chair over. He doesn't pause, doesn't pick it up, just keeps backing away. "This isn't his fault. I won't let you — I won't let you accuse him of this. He's a _victim_ , but you — you _humans_ always blame us."

"Derek. Look at it logically," Weńcz says, slowly. "This is a werewolf who targeted Laura Hale, your sister. He or she killed Laura to pick up whatever alpha werewolf magic she has, however that works. And then this werewolf, who lured your sister to her death, starts killing people on a list she made of people connected to the fire. Why would anyone but a fellow victim of that same fire do that?"

Stiles, toneless, says, "The first death is usually the most important. Whether it's Peter or not, she's the one the rogue alpha felt the most about."

"It's not possible," Derek insists. "It can't be him. Stiles, you saw him — tell him."

Stiles looks at Weńcz. His eyes look haunted, and between where he's sitting and how he looks, Weńcz is reminded uncomfortably of Claudia, in the last days before she was living in the hospice center. _Fix this_ , his eyes are saying, and Weńcz doesn't know how. Every instinct he has, instilled by his father, codified by his training and work as a sniper, sharpened and honed in law enforcement, tells him that the connection is to the Hale fire.

But Derek is right. Peter Hale is catatonic, and that's no easy thing to fake. Certainly not for a werewolf, with their senses — 

There's an idea. Weńcz heaves a sigh, as if he's making some sort of concession. The way he scrubs one hand over his face, however, is real.

"Derek. You're right. I know I've suggested a logical connection — you wouldn't be protesting so hard if you didn't believe me on some level — but you're right about your uncle's catatonia. We're not going to solve much more tonight. Why don't we all sleep on it? Tomorrow, I'll talk to Adrian Harris, see if that shakes the pattern loose."

Stiles stares at him for a minute, and then says, "You want to figure out if there's some way to test catatonia that works better on werewolves."

"If Harris doesn't shake the pattern, yes."

Derek only relaxes a fraction, but he does relax. Thank God for small blessings.

* * *

Arranging to meet during Adrian Harris's free period is more like arranging to meet during Adrian Harris's lunch. Harris sets his book aside, but doesn't bother putting down his sandwich. 

"You'll have to forgive me," he says. "I teach three different sciences, so I don't —"

Weńcz cuts him off right there, faintly reminded of that guy who played the Scarecrow in the new Batman movie Stiles and Scott like so much. "It's fine. I understand packed schedules, and I appreciate you taking the time to speak to me."

Harris gives him a controlled smile. It doesn't show teeth. "Of course. It's hardly an inconvenience, although I can't quite imagine why the local sheriff's office would need to ask me anything. I don't own any mountain lions." Another controlled, seemingly self-deprecating smile.

But all Weńcz is reading off this man is anxiety. Well, anxiety and a touch of condescension, but that's hardly new. He's a condescending little shit every time he calls to complain about the high school seniors egging his house. There's a running pool at the office for how long it'll take whoever's on the desk to tell him to try not being an infuriating dick to his students for the three years he has them.

Weńcz returns the smile with one of his own, every bit as fake. "This is something else, an old issue. If it's connected to the animal attacks, we'll have to start checking the preserve for toxic waste or radioactive spiders or something." At Harris's disdainful look, Weńcz says, "No, it's about a fire. I have reason to believe you may know something about how the Hale fire happened? Did Laura Hale come to speak with you?"

That gets a reaction. It's there and gone again quickly, of course, because Harris knows better than to scowl at a police officer asking him questions for long. Weńcz waits, trying not to speculate.

Harris breaks: he sets the sandwich down and sighs. He closees his eyes, presses his fingers against the bridge of his nose, and finally says, "She thought I was connected to the fire. I didn't even recognize her at first. She was so angry. Looked totally different from --"

"We're on your lunch," Weńcz says, "so just hit the high points. Ms. Hale thought you were connected with the fire. Were you?" The last thing he needs is Adrian Harris's self-important ramblings clouding up the facts.

"I didn't set that fire," Harris says. Not really an answer, Weńcz notes. He arches an eyebrow, and Harris adds, "Listen, it was six years ago, and before I was sober."

"High points," Weńcz reminds him.

"I met a woman in a bar. Pretty, blonde, no name. No idea where she was from or what she did for a living. We went through a hundred and twenty dollars worth of alcohol. She started in the questions halfway through." Harris pauses. He chews his lip, swallows, looks away.

The heart of the matter, then. Weńcz considers pushing. Decides not to. Then thinks: hell with it, and asks, "What kind of questions?"

Harris stays quiet for a moment, trying to collect himself, or maybe trying to find a way to justify whatever he's about to say. "What science can really do. How you can actually apply physics and chemistry. So I told her." Harris shrugs, almost helplessly, as if asking what he could possibly have done. 

After all, he'd been a barely-functional alcoholic, and a pretty woman had chatted him up in his favorite place. A pretty woman who'd gone a suspiciously long time nameless.

"I told her how to identify diamonds easily. How you could melt through a bank vault, or disintegrate a body. How to get away with murder, and that's not even all of it."

"How you could start a fire, and get away with arson?" Weńcz guesses.

Harris grimaces. But he finishes Weńcz's thought: "And a week later, the Hale house burned down."

"All that, and a hundred plus dollars of booze, and the two of you never exchanged names? You never even asked?"

"Of course I asked! But she just laughed." Harris pauses, and his eyes unfocus, sliding away into a memory. He sounds almost dazed as he says, "She had this raspy, husky laugh. She sounded older than she looked."

"You could have come forward. You could have said something." Weńcz tries not to think about another blonde with a dark, smoky voice. Sure, he knows the Argents hunt werewolves, and he knows the Argents in specific make Derek more nervous than hunters in general.

Didn't Derek try to cover for Kate when she shot him?

Harris's scoff pulls him out of his thoughts. He goes on to say, "And be an accomplice? It would have ended my teaching career."

Well, the alcoholism nearly did. Weńcz shifts gears. "Did she have any tattoos? Did you see her driver's license? Do you remember anything at all that could point to her?"

"All questions Laura Hale asked," Harris says with a weary sigh. "I'll give you what I gave her." And with that, he unlocks one of his desk drawers and withdraws a sheet of paper. "It's just a copy. But this is all I have on her."

Weńcz takes it, and stares down. Harris had drawn a circle, and then within it, a snarling dog and a few arrows. It looks familiar, but he can't place it.

"It's a necklace," Harris says. "She said it was a family thing. Find that, and you find the arsonist."

"Murderer," Weńcz corrects. He can see just how Harris took that, too, with the way he startles. Good to know he feels at least a little guilt for his inaction.

Harris restrains himself to a simple, "Excuse me?"

"Arson happens to property. This woman's a murderer."

* * *

This is probably the understatement of his lifetime, but Stiles really doesn't want to be at school. It's a pretty crazy new feeling, honestly; he's never been much for skipping, apart from the occasional mental health day. But this whole werewolf thing has really cut into his tolerance for bullshit, and even though it's healed over, he swears he can still feel the warm throb of the hole the Argent put in his stomach.

Everything is loud, and bright, with too many heartbeats and too many scents. Maybe the wolf part of him is on high alert or something, because it all keeps distracting him, even more than he's used to. He tries to stick close to Erica, but they don't share that many classes. Just gym — which he thankfully doesn't have today — AP Euro, and Chemistry.

As if she's completely unaware that her grandfather is an evil, murderous psycho who _stabbed him in the stomach_ a little over twelve hours ago, Allison sits at the Sophomore Elite + Boyd table. She looks pale and hollow-eyed, and Stiles meets her gaze, then looks around at the empty seats at their table.

Scott. Lydia. The unifying forces, the people who make everyone get along. And Jackson, too. If there's even a shred of decent human in him, he's probably in the hospital waiting for Lydia to wake up.

Erica tries, sort of. But she's not much of a peace maker, and there's honestly not much peace to be made here. Stiles doesn't want to be anywhere near an Argent anymore, for any reason. Still, better to be around Erica and Boyd than be alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, guys. I'm sorry to have to do this. But I feel like it's been long enough, and honestly, the only thing I feel when I think about this show is _resentment_. I'm probably never going to rejoin this fandom, and I will never finish this fic.
> 
> And honestly, it makes me sad, because this show could have been so _good_ , if it had been run by competent people. And I was really looking forward to where this fic was going.
> 
> So, here's what I have of chapter eleven, and throughout the next few days, I'll be posting notes and fragments from what I'd planned for "cast our fevers in stone" and its follow-ups.


	12. remaining notes for "cast fevers" // a farewell: part two

# Remaining Notes For Ch. 11

  * Harris threatens Stiles. Discussion of the upcoming winter formal. Scott mentions that his mother has forbidden him to go. 
  * Parent-teacher conference. Gerard just fuckIng needles Chris and Victoria through the whole thing, then WHOOPS runs over the Sheriff. 
  * Derek and Stiles comforting each other (because srsly the Sheriff getting run over? Distressing) and trying to come up with a way to test werewolf catatonia. 
  * Lydia wakes up -- and Peter walks out.



# Remaining Notes For Ch. 12

  * Stiles — Stiles, Weńcz, Derek put things together. 
  * Kate is released on bail. 
  * School — prep for the winter formal. 
  * Stiles makes it clear that he wants nothing to do with Allison or anyone who sides with her. 
  * Allison snoops around her parents' stuff -- and gets caught. 
  * Partly as an object lesson to Allison, Derek is taken from the Sheriff's own house. ("Leave the kid.")



# Remaining Notes For Ch. 13

  * Werewolf Anatomy 301, guest lecturer Kate Argent, subject Derek Hale. 
  * Impotent fury, Sheriff And BCSO Style. 
  * So a supposedly catatonic menace walks into the Sheriff's house and wants to know where his nephew is... 
  * THE WINTER FORMAL. Allison and Lydia dance, Erica and Boyd dance (wat), and then Lydia gets dragged out to the football field, and Allison goes after her. 
  * Allison is taken, persuaded to ask for the bite, and gives up Derek's location. Peter drags her to the Hale House with him -- and forces her to call her parents and the Stilinskis.



# Remaining Notes For Ch. 14

  * Summarized in my notes only as, "SO EVERYBODY WAS KUNG FU FIGHTING." 
  * More specifically, because I remember this shit, the entire chapter was devoted to the Hale House Throwdown. All factions converge on the Hale House. Lydia sets Peter on fire, Stiles is focused on getting Derek the hell out of the basement and away, while the Sheriff focuses on Peter, Lydia, and the Argents. Ultimately, Derek cuts Peter's throat, and the Sheriff has to figure out a cover-up.



# Remaining Notes For Ch. 15

  * Summarized in my notes only as, "DRAW THE DAGGER OUT, LORD, AND LET ME GO." 
  * This was intended to be a general denouement. The Derek-Argent-Oh-Shit-Allison's-A-Werewolf angle needed to be cleared up. Same for the Sheriff's feelings regarding a teenaged girl setting a man on fire and a young man he kind of wants to parent cutting his own uncle's throat, as well as his own part in the cover-up. 
  * I'd also intended to make sure there was a teaser for a Lovecraftian/Orwellian horror blend involving Peter trying to come back from the dead and Victoria Argent taking over the school district.




	13. "the longest peace in china" // a farewell: part three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, "cast our fevers in stone" was going to be followed up by an alternate Season 2 called "the railway house," which was intended to navigate some of the complicated dynamics left over from S1 (Derek as a new-minted alpha, Allison as a new-minted werewolf, and the long history between their families) as well as explore a Lovecraftian horror set-up in the form of Peter Hale using a young psychopomp as a horcrux to effect his own resurrection.
> 
> Obviously, that didn't happen.
> 
> The follow-up for _that_ would have been a story called, "the longest peace in china," as a semi-alternate Season 3 exploring the results of werewolves "outing" their existence to the world. (I've never had much tolerance for The Masquerade. I much prefer The Unmasked World, or even worlds where there never was any masquerade.) It would have been a highly political story.
> 
> This is what I have of it.

You'll wait a long, long time for anything much  
To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud  
And the Northern Lights that run like tingling nerves.  
The sun and moon get crossed, but they never touch,  
Nor strike out fire from each other nor crash out loud.  
The planets seem to interfere in their curves  
But nothing ever happens, no harm is done.  
We may as well go patiently on with our life,  
And look elsewhere than to stars and moon and sun  
For the shocks and changes we need to keep us sane.  
It is true the longest drought will end in rain,  
The longest peace in China will end in strife.  
Still it wouldn't reward the watcher to stay awake  
In hopes of seeing the calm of heaven break  
On his particular time and personal sight.  
That calm seems certainly safe to last to-night.

\-- Robert Frost, "On Looking Up by Chance at the Constellations"

* * *

**To** : w.stilinski@bcso.gov  
**From** : victoria@argentarmory.com  
**Subject** : you should see this

Word in the wood says this is hunt-related.

[timesuni.on/1qVrxj8]()

Victoria Argent  
COO, CEO of Argent Armory

* * *

## Six Dead in Gosling's Run

By Lauren White

Police said six people — three adults and three children — were killed in a house fire in Gosling's Run, NY, on August 15, 2012. The names of the victims have not been officially released, but the burned property was owned by Robert and Irene Williams, now living in Seattle.

Irene Williams confirmed that the property was leased to a family of six, but would not release the names of the tenants.

READ MORE AT TIMESUNION.COM

* * *

**To** : duncan.chase@benbowuniversity.edu  
**From** : victoria@argentarmory.com  
**Subject** : 

I would have expected better of the Chase family. For your sake, I hope White never gets a look at the autopsies.

Victoria Argent  
COO, CEO of Argent Armory

* * *

ERICKA HEMPSTEAD:

The autopsy reports haven't been made public — it won't, it can't be released unless there's a trial — but I do hear rumors.

LAUREN WHITE:

I hear those rumors, too, Ericka. As it is, the police have officially declared the deaths of the Sorkin family to be a murder, and the house fire that killed them was arson.

HEMPSTEAD:

Can you confirm any of the rumors about the deaths of the two children?

WHITE:

(nods)

I can confirm that the bodies of Kylie and Kevin Sorkin were found outside the house, in their own back yard, by the firefighters, and I can confirm that they didn't die of smoke inhalation. 

Local news report, September 1 2012

* * *

> According to the police report, Kylie Sorkin (9) and Kevin Sorkin (6) escaped the burning house, only to be cut down — literally — in their back yard. Each child had two horizontal lacerations to the throat, ensuring swift deaths of blood loss.
> 
> Of near equal note, some claim, is the damage the fire did to the children's hands: both of the Sorkin children had elongated, sharp-looking fingernails.

— excerpt from "Update On Gosling's Run Murders," by Lauren White, Times Union Evening Ed. September 12 2012

* * *

 **United States Trends** · [Change]()

[#GoslingsRun]()

* * *

Title Card: ON THE RECORD WITH GRETA VAN SUSTEREN

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN:

Thanks to twitter and FaceBook, the news of a gruesome murder in Gosling's Run has become widespread. Here with me today are Jeff Chase, a local resident, and Lauren White, a reporter with the Times Union.

BEAT.

Ms. White, you've been covering this story since the beginning, is that correct?

LAUREN WHITE:

Yes, Greta, that's right. I was the first reporter on the scene, and I've been covering this since. It's been an interesting ride, I won't lie.

VAN SUSTEREN:

Can you give us a quick summary for those who might not have heard?

WHITE:

Oh, yes, of course! As best we can tell, in September of this year, someone targeted a family in Gosling's Run and set their house on fire, killing four people in one go.

JEFF CHASE:

Hey, hey, you can't go saying stuff like that. This wasn't some "targeted attack". It's awful, but I honestly don't think —

WHITE:

Then explain the kids to me, Mr. Chase. Somebody wanted to be very sure that none of the Sorkins survived.

CHASE:

It must have been the work of some random lunatic —

WHITE:

Yes, a random lunatic, Mr. Chase. I mean, as far as I can tell, nobody in Gosling's Run had any grudges against the Sorkins. They lived quietly. They were _well-behaved_.

CHASE:

I'm not sure I understand what you're implying.

WHITE:

And I think you know exactly what I'm implying, Mr. Chase. Isn't your father connected to Benbow University, up in Maine?

VAN SUSTEREN:

I'm not sure how any of this is relevant —

WHITE:

Search the alumni and tenured faculty at Benbow University, and you'll have a laundry list of _murderers_.

BEAT.

(face begins to ripple)

We know exactly why the Sorkins were killed. They weren't killed because of something they'd done. They weren't killed because they happened to catch the eye of a lunatic. 

CHASE:

That's ludicrous, do you hear this, it's ludicrous. I can't just, Greta, calm her down.

WHITE:

(eyebrows have vanished, forehead has strange ridges, nose is broader)

(lisping) 

The Sorkins were killed for what they were. They were killed for being werewolves.

CUT TO COMMERCIAL

"On The Record With Greta Van Susteren," September 23 2012

* * *

**stilinski not sinatra** @Stilinski24  
Holy shit. [#werewolvesonfoxnews]() [@DHale]()

 **erica fury** @erinye-ereyes  
HOLY SHIT [@DHALE]() [@STILINSKI24]() [@BHLAHEY]() [@BOYDJUSTBOYD]() [@ALLYA]()

 **The Daily Show** @TheDailyShow  
Tonight: join us as we ask Fox News: WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? [#werewolvesonfoxnews]()

* * *

**United States Trends** · [Change]()  
[#werewolvesonfoxnews]()  
[#werewolvesarereal]()  
[#werewolvesarentreal]()

* * *

JON STEWART:

Alright, alright, everybody. Time to move on from making fun of the economy to making fun of my favorite people — Fox News.

BEAT

I mean, can you believe this? They're so desperate to drag attention away from Mitt Romney's bout of honesty — and their die-hard support of America's first android presidential candidate — that they paid some poor woman to go on national television in a wolf-man suit!

* * *

**stilinski not sinatra** @Stilinski24  
So instagram added a new filter @DHale @bhlahey @erinye-ereyes @boydjustboyd @allyA [#werewolvesonfoxnews]()

 **gravedigger** @bhlahey  
holy shit there's a werecreature filter on instagram [#werewolvesonfoxnews]()

* * *

It's not Erica's fault. It's not even Stiles's fault, although he's pretty sure he's the one that Derek's going to get mad at. Stiles has been a werewolf the longest, after all, and is also too smart to be doing this crap.

But there's Vine after Vine of dumb teenagers grinning goofily at the camera, then _changing_ , until their foreheads grow ridges and their straight white teeth turn into fangs. Clip after clip on YouTube of young werewolves doing stupid things, from shifting and jumping over moving cars to making terrible American Idol audition videos.

Hell, Stiles has been avoiding reddit because the most upvoted, comment-heavy AMA on there right now is "Hi Reddit! I Am A werewolf, AMA!" And how the hell did whoever started that send proof to the moderators, anyway?

So, seriously, not his fault.

But Stiles does end up being the one to hold the camera while Erica flashes a brilliant grin, her sunlight-yellow curls bouncing over her shoulders as she lifts her human hands, then extends her claws. She's gotten good enough at it that she doesn't even grow fur on her hands.

"Hello to all those werewolves out there who like to look nice," Erica says, and her grin shades from brilliant to sharp. "Let's talk nail art."

* * *

STEPHEN COLBERT:

Yes, my fellow Americans, secret werewolves might even be worse than bears! This is not a drill — secret werewolves might actually be worse than bears!

CUT TO A YOUTUBE CLIP OF A YOUNG FEMALE WEREWOLF DISCUSSING THE NAIL ART POSSIBLE WITH CLAWS.

COLBERT:

They even pass as harmless teenaged girls! Look at those gorgeous claws, though. That color looks great with her eyes and hair.

BEAT.

Of course she's also _clearly_ a ruthless murder machine and danger to society.

* * *

Stiles isn't even in Derek's apartment building when he hears Derek's shouted command: "Take it _down_!"

He doesn't hear Erica's reply, but the heartbeats of the rest of the pack are loud and fast. Isaac's sounds nervous.

Stiles is on the stairs when he hears Derek say, much quieter, "They'll find you. They'll find us. If you don't want to _die_ at seventeen, take it off YouTube."

He opens the door to the loft, and sees Erica bow her head.

"Okay," she says, quietly.

Derek turns to look at Stiles, then points at him. "And don't think I don't know that you were involved in this. What the hell were you thinking?"

"That it made Erica happy?"

Derek rolls his eyes.

* * *

Title Card: CNN NEWSROOM

WOLF BLITZER:

Joining us from New York is Thea Rossi, C. E. O. of Rossi Consolidated Holdings. A pleasure to have you, Ms. Rossi.

THEA ROSSI:

A pleasure to be here, Wolf.

BLITZER:

You mentioned that you can shed some light on this… current trend that's managed to take the spotlight away from the Presidential Election.

ROSSI:

I'd like to believe that I can, yes. 

(leans toward BLITZER)

Tell me, what did you think when you saw the Fox News footage?

BLITZER:

My personal thoughts aren't really relevant, but the Society of Professional Journalists and the RTNDA have been publishing some very interesting thoughts about Fox's breach of ethics.

ROSSI:

So you, the SPJ, and the RTNDA all believe that Fox News perpetuated some sort of scam? Do you, like Jon Stewart, believe it to have been a smokescreen to distract from the "forty-seven percent" remarks?

BLITZER:

That's largely been accepted in the journalistic world, yes.

ROSSI:

Then how do you explain the children? Teenagers and college students probably wouldn't have access to the make-up or prosthetics to fake what Lauren White is accused of faking.

BLITZER:

Well, it's better than twerking. Although it's convenient that Ms. White is unavailable for comment.

BEAT.

ROSSI:

Rather than imply that Ms. White disappeared herself after causing this… journalistic and political… tangle, I'd suggest you and your network send condolences to her family.

BLITZER:

(surprised)

Has something happened--?

ROSSI:

She and another individual were involved in a car crash just four days after that disastrous interview. Ms. White was fatally shot when she went seeking help. I'm surprised nobody found this newsworthy.

BLITZER:

I — Ms. Rossi, how did you hear about this? Is there some way we can verify it?

ROSSI:

I attended her funeral. If you'd like, I can write down the location of the White family plot, as well as the number her parents actually answer. 

BLITZER:

Please, feel free. We'll have to verify, of course — and I would like our viewers to know that this information, as, as startling as it may be, _is_ still unverified.

ROSSI:

Of course.

BLITZER:

Is there anything else you have to add on this trend?

ROSSI:

Oh yes. Before I… offer you my information, I need you to understand that none of what you're about to see involves make-up or prosthetics in any way. I will remain in full control of my faculties, and you will be in no danger. 

BEAT.

BLITZER: 

Yes, of course. I hardly believe —

ROSSI:

(face changes, forehead and brow ridges forming. eyes turn red. peels lips back to reveal fangs.)

BLITZER:

My god —

(jerks back in his chair)

ROSSI:

I am a werewolf, and I am in full control of myself, Mr. Blitzer. I may not be human, but I am still a thinking person, and I am not going to hurt you.

(shrugs out of suit jacket)

BLITZER:

Ms. Rossi —

ROSSI:

(stands from chair and removes high heels, then closes her eyes and changes into a wolf)

BLITZER:

(shakily, never removing eyes from Rossi)

To anyone who may be watching this, this is not a trick, this is not the work of special effects, and this is not a scam. Thea Rossi, C. E. O. of Rossi Consolidated Holdings, has just claimed to be a werewolf — and backed it up by turning into a wolf.

CUT TO COMMERCIAL

* * *

**Associated Press** [@AP]()  
Congress calls for hearing on existence of werewolves. [apne.ws/1jf7MNY]()

 **HOWL** [@HowlOrg]()  
Hello, world!

 **HOWL** [@HowlOrg]()  
We are a budding pro-werewolf group who intend to promote werewolf interests in legislation and fight any discrimination werewolves may face

 **Rossi Consolidated Holdings** [@RossiHoldings]()  
Rossi Holdings is proud to announce support of HOWL, the first pro-werewolf group.

 **Center For Disease Control** [@CDCGov]()  
Debunking lycanthropy contagion myths: [tinyurl.com/4fsJmNX]()  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to end with a few words of thanks:
> 
> Thank you to Leviathanmirror, to Rhion, to Innocentsmith, to Cheloya, to Cait, and to everyone else who pre-read, alpha-read, beta-read, pointed me in the direction of research I needed to do, handed me what I needed to know, listened to me rant, or otherwise had anything to do with me while I was writing this fic. You were all invaluable. This fic _might_ be here without you, but it wouldn't be any good. All mistakes are mine and not theirs.
> 
> Thank you to the people who commented and kudosed and bookmarked. Y'all helped me keep going, even when the fic was frustrating or my life was making it hard to write.
> 
> Thank you to the people who waited. You're awesome and I admire the hell out of your patience. I wouldn't have been so patient in your position.
> 
> And in the end, thank you, thank you, thank you all for reading. I'm sorry I couldn't finish, but it was a wild ride, and I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
